Red Velvet...oil or butter?

[kayla233]

Hi! I have been asked to make a red velvet cake for saturday...I planned on using the KAF recipe, the only issue is, the recipe calls for butter, not oil. I work in a bakery and one of my seasoned cake-baking colleagues told me oil is the way to go. Anyone have any suggestions about substituting or omitting butter for oil? Some? all? I'm just not sure! i want this cake to be moist and delicious. I even would be open to a new recipe if anyone has a tried and true one. Thank you!!

 

[Norcalbaker59]

Hi! I have been asked to make a red velvet cake for saturday...I planned on using the KAF recipe, the only issue is, the recipe calls for butter, not oil. I work in a bakery and one of my seasoned cake-baking colleagues told me oil is the way to go. Anyone have any suggestions about substituting or omitting butter for oil? Some? all? I'm just not sure! i want this cake to be moist and delicious. I even would be open to a new recipe if anyone has a tried and true one. Thank you!!

Oil cakes have a higher rise and moister crumb than butter cakes. They just lack the flavor that butter cakes have.

But you cannot substitute oil for butter in this cake because the butter and sugar is creamed. The creaming of butter and sugar is not about stirring two ingredients together. Rather creaming butter and sugar is mechanical leavening. Mechanical leavening works with the baking soda to give the cake rise. When the beater moves through the butter the sugar crystals cuts the butter. That creates pockets in the butter. The butter is pliable; when the moisture activates the baking soda, the gases get trapped in those pockets and they expand, pushing the cake batter upward. If you replace the butter with oil you eliminate the mechanical leavening. The amount of chemical leavening is not enough to make the cake rise fully without the mechanical leavening, so the cake will be denser.

If you want to use oil you need to look for a recipe that contains oil. The recipe Will be formulated with the correct type of flour, amount of chemical leavening, and appropriate mixing method to ensure the cake rises properly.


King Arthur Flour is unbleached flour. Unbleached flour doesn’t make very good cake because it’s very high in protein. High protein flour absorbs significantly more liquid than bleached flour. The cocoa powder also absorbs a lot of liquid. So the cake will be dense and heavy. And King Arthur unbleached flour at 11.7% protein is really suited for breads, cookies, and not cake.

I would recommend you look for a recipe that uses cake flour or at the very least, bleached all purpose flour.