Looking back at my Home Science notebook we were given a recipe for “small” cakes which we also called “Patty Cakes” and which in the US are called Cup Cakes.
The recipe was a “foundation” recipe from which deviations could be made. The basic rules in this recipe was that the butter and sugar weighed the same (both 2 oz) and the flour was double that (4 oz).
Butter = Sugar
Flour = 2 * Sugar/Butter
Looking at our two recipes for Red Velvet neither adhere to that rule. Red Velvet Cup Cakes has no proportions at all. Rose Red Cake is close: Butter = ~0.5 * Sugar; Flour = Sugar; Flour = ~ 0.5 * butter. Both use a lot more sugar.
The Rose Red cake makes less batter because it uses less ingredients. So to convert it to be the same quantity as the Red Velvet Cup Cake recipe, we multiplied the sugar by 1.5 so that both recipes had 10.5 ounces. We then multiplied the rest of the ingredients by 1.5 and this is what we got.
| Recipe Analysis | ||
| Ingredient | RRV @ 1.5 times RVCC | |
| Weight | ||
| Sugar | 10.5 | oz |
| Cake Flour | 10.5 | oz |
| Butter | 3 | oz |
| Oil | 3 | oz |
| Eggs | 4.5 | |
| Cocoa Powder | 1.5 | tsp |
| Baking Soda | ||
| Baking Powder | 4.5 | tsp |
| Salt | 0.75 | tsp |
| Buttermilk | 0.75 | cup |
| Red Food Coloring | 3 | tbsp |
| Vanilla Extract | 0.75 | tsp |
| Distilled White Vinegar | none | |
Compared to the Red Velvet Cup Cake, this recipe uses 3 times more food coloring while using hardly any cocoa powder at all. It also uses about twice the amount of leavening. It also using more fat but does not use egg yolks. They are really quite dis-similiar.
A few days later, we read about Cake Formulas.
… to be completed