Red Velvet Sheet Cake

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This red velvet sheet cake has everything you love (fluffy texture, subtle tang, and rich cream cheese frosting) without the extra work of stacking cake layers. After years of perfecting my recipe, it’s become a go-to for home bakers with rave reviews. With just a few key ingredients and simple steps, you’ll have a classic, crowd-pleasing cake that’s as easy as it is delicious!

Here’s the thing: red velvet cake can be tricky and it often gets a bad rap from bakers and tasters. Too often, it turns out dry, crumbly, or lacking that perfect balance of fluffiness and sweetness. But after years of baking cakes for birthdays, weddings, and showers (and then moving to sharing recipes here on my website), I’ve perfected a recipe that delivers soft, flavorful results every time.

ALL-PURPOSE FLOUR: a lot of fluffy cake recipes call for cake flour, which boasts lower protein than all-purpose. With a careful adjustment of the amount of all-purpose flour combined with the next ingredient on our list, we can replicate the fluffiness of using cake flour without actually using it.

CORNSTARCH: I use cornstarch often in my cookie recipes to keep them soft. As mentioned, when combined with all-purpose flour in a cake recipe, we can encourage a fluffy cake crumb.

UNSWEETENED COCOA POWDER: with just 3 Tablespoons in the whole cake, no, it does not categorize red velvet cake as a chocolate cake, per se. Since cocoa powder is considered an acidic ingredient, it reacts with the baking soda and buttermilk to create a tight, tender crumb.

SALT & VANILLA EXTRACT: for complementary flavor.

BAKING SODA: the key leavening agent for our cake! When combined with acidic ingredients like cocoa powder and buttermilk (or our substitute), it produces carbon dioxide which = lots of bubbles which = a cake that rises beautifully.

UNSALTED BUTTER: this is half our fat source for this cake. It brings a buttery note as well as lends itself to trapping air when creamed with sugar to help our cake stay fluffy.

GRANULATED SUGAR: I typically opt for brown sugar in cookies to bring maximum flavor and moisture, but in order to keep this cake fluffy, we have to choose a lighter (in mass) sugar. We’ll add extra moisture with the next ingredient.

OIL: I have experimented a lot with using all butter in my red velvet cake recipe, and I just can’t quite replicate the same moist cake crumb that I can when I use a combination of butter and oil. Use any oil you prefer. I’ve used everything from canola oil to avocado oil. I do not recommend olive oil or coconut oil as those flavors are a little too strong for this cake.

EGGS: make sure your eggs are at room temperature and separated. The egg whites will come in separately from the yolks to insure a fluffy crumb.

DISTILLED WHITE VINEGAR: vinegar is essential for aiding in leavening the cake as well as lending that signature tangy flavor.

BUTTERMILK (or VINEGAR/LEMON JUICE + MILK): buttermilk is crucial to the success of red velvet cake. The good news is, you can make homemade buttermilk easily with distilled white vinegar or lemon juice and regular milk, which is what I do 99% of the time. See the notes in the recipe for adjusting the amount of distilled white vinegar in this recipe if you do have buttermilk.

RED FOOD COLORING: I prefer to use gel food coloring, but liquid food coloring will work just fine. See recipe notes for my favorite brand.

For the cream cheese frosting, you will need:
• full fat block cream cheese
• room temperature butter
• powdered sugar
• vanilla extract
•salt

Your butter, milk/buttermilk, and eggs must be at room temperature. It’s important your butter especially is at room temperature and not warmer. Room temperature butter is cooler than you likely think it is, so be sure it’s not too soft, otherwise your red velvet cake is sure to be dry.

It’s important to be sure your cream cheese frosting ingredients are also at room temperature so our frosting stays nice and smooth and free from lumps.

This is not a recipe where we can just dump all of the ingredients together and expect a perfect crumb. As I mentioned, red velvet cake can be finicky, so take care in every step.

Sift the dry ingredients: do not skip sifting the dry ingredients. Sifting removes lumps, combines your dry ingredients in a uniform fashion, and sets you up for a seamless entry of dry ingredients into your wet ingredients.

Sour the milk: I wrote this recipe assuming you do not have buttermilk, so at this point in the recipe, add 1 Tablespoon of the distilled white vinegar to the milk, stir it around, and let it sour while you proceed with the recipe (you’ve effectively made homemade buttermilk). You’ll add those extra 2 teaspoons in a bit. If you do have buttermilk, you’re not going to add anything to your buttermilk. You’ll just be adding those 2 teaspoons of vinegar to the wet ingredients.

Make the wet ingredient base: cream the butter and sugar, then add in the oil, yolks, vanilla, red food coloring, and additional vinegar.

Alternate dry ingredients with the soured milk/buttermilk: this is another crucial step. You’ll split your dry ingredients into roughly 3 parts (just eyeball this, it doesn’t have to be perfect) and your buttermilk/vinegar + milk in half (again, eyeball), then, starting with the dry ingredients, alternate adding each to the batter and letting it slowly incorporate.

Pour + bake: my sheet cake takes exactly 39 minutes in my oven. I start checking around 36 minutes, because it’s crucial red velvet cake does not get overbaked. You want to look for moist crumbs on your cake tester but not wet batter. Do not wait for a totally clean/dry tester, as the cake will continue to bake a bit in the pan when you take it out of the oven.