High Altitude Red Velvet Cake with Black Cocoa Buttercream
A moist and fluffy red velvet cake, frosted with black cocoa buttercream and decorated with red ribbons and buttercream piping for a moody, gothic look for Halloween.
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Equipment
- Stand Mixer with Paddle Attachment
- 8-inch cake pans (x3)
Ingredients
Cake
- 3 cups cake flour, fluffed, spooned, and leveled
- 1 ¾ cups granulated sugar
- ¼ cup unsweetened Dutch processed cocoa powder
- 1 tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 4 large eggs
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 1 ⅔ cups whole buttermilk
- 1 tbsp white distilled vinegar
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- red gel food coloring
- ¾ cup mini semi sweet chocolate chips, optional (see notes)
Buttercream
- 2 cups unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 3 cups powdered sugar
- ½ cup unsweetened Dutch processed cocoa powder
- ½ cup black cocoa powder
- 1 tbsp meringue powder, optional
- ¼ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 2-4 tbsp milk, only if needed for consistency
- ½ tsp "super black" gel food coloring, optional
Instructions
Cake
- Preheat the oven to 350 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Lightly spray the bottoms of three 8-inch cake pans with non-stick baking spray, and line the bottoms of the pans with circles of parchment paper.
- In a bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, salt and baking soda.
- In a separate large bowl, whisk together the eggs, oil, buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla and a few drops of red gel food coloring.
- Add the wet ingredients to the dry, and whisk briefly, just until combined and smooth; don’t over-mix. If adding mini chocolate chips, you can fold them in now.
- Divide the batter between the pans and bake on the middle rack in the oven for about 25-28 minutes, until a cake tester inserted into the center of the cakes comes out clean and the tops spring back when gently touched.
- Set the cakes on a wire rack, cover loosely with a clean kitchen towel and cool completely before frosting.
Buttercream
- In the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium speed for several minutes until smooth.
- In a separate bowl, combine the powdered sugar, cocoa powder, meringue powder, and salt. Add the sugar mixture to the butter by spoonfuls, mixing on low to combine. Add the vanilla and milk (add the milk only if needed to slightly thin the buttercream), and whip on medium speed for 4-5 minutes, scraping the bowl occasionally, until very light and fluffy.
- Add the black food coloring, only if the color doesn't seem dark enough. Note that the color of the buttercream will become deeper and darker as it sits, so you may want to make the buttercream several hours in advance, and keep it covered until needed, to check the color before frosting your cake.
- Fill and stack the cake layers with the buttercream, then frost all over with a very thin crumb coat of buttercream; chill for 30 minutes. Frost the cake all over with a final smooth coat of buttercream
Decorating
- To decorate my cake, I used tip #104 to pipe some random ribbons or squiggles on the top and sides of the cake.
- Then I used a small amount of vanilla buttercream I had on hand, tinted with super red gel food coloring and a small amount of the black buttercream to deepen the red color, and used tip #18 to pipe some small red rosettes onto the cake.
- I then used tip #352 to add a few black buttercream leaves around the flowers.
- Lastly, I decorated the cake with red ribbons. (See this post for instructions on how to attach ribbons to a cake.)
Notes
Store the leftover cake in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.
https://curlygirlkitchen.com/