Red velvet cake is a dessert popular in the American South, where it most likely originated. It is similar in flavor and texture to yellow cake, but contains cocoa and typically gets its trademark color from red food coloring. Recipes for this cake vary widely, and its color can range from a deep red-brown to a somewhat off-putting fuchsia.
The exact origin of red velvet cake is not known. A 1972 cookbook, James Beard's American Cookery, tells that the addition of acidic ingredients like buttermilk and vinegar react chemically with cocoa to produce a reddish shade. Though Beard's recipes use food coloring, cocoa used to be less alkaline than it is now, so it is possible that cooks began adding red food coloring to mimic the effect of acidic ingredients on older types of cocoa. Not all recipes use food coloring, however; some prefer boiled beets. This cake traditionally has white cream cheese frosting.
Red velvet cake was the subject of a 1960s urban legend in which a customer at New York's Waldorf-Astoria was sold a recipe for the dessert at a whopping price. The tall tale is accompanied by the supposed recipe, passed on the friends and acquaintances as revenge against the store. However, this story has been around since the 1940s at least, and the type of dessert and the priced charged for the recipe vary with the times. In the most current version, it is Nieman Marcus who sells a chocolate chip cookie for $250 US dollars (USD).
While the cake is more down-home comfort food than haute cuisine, it is increasingly popular in commercial bakeries. It made an appearance in 1989 in the movie Steel Magnolias, and Texan singer Jessica Simpson notoriously had one at her wedding. Though some chefs are horrified at the quantities of food coloring involved in the red velvet cake, the dessert seems here to stay.