The Best Red Velvet Bundt Cake with Cream Cheese Glaze
Red Velvet Bundt Cake – a tender and moist red velvet cake with a cream cheese icing.
Valentine’s Day Cake
With Valentine’s Day just a few days away, I have the perfect Valentine’s Day cake you can whip up in no time! My Red Velvet Bundt Cake is incredibly moist and flavorful and is paired with a basic cream cheese icing that I’ve drizzled on top. Best of all, the color of this cake is a vibrant dark red!
What You Need For This Red Velvet Bundt Cake
As you prepare to make this cake, here are a few items you’ll want to make sure to have on hand:
- 10-cup bundt pan – I use this Brilliance Bundt Pan
- Red velvet emulsion – I use Lorann emulsions. You can find the red velvet emulsion HERE. Can’t get it in time? No worries, just sub the emulsion with red food coloring.
- All purpose flour
- Brown sugar
- Granulated sugar
- Eggs
- Sour cream
- Cocoa powder
- Buttermilk
- Baking soda
- White baking vinegar
- Cream cheese
- Powdered sugar
- Vanilla
Red Velvet Bundt Cake
As you probably know, a red velvet cake is considered a chocolate cake, even though it has a very minimal amount of cocoa. It also has a little tanginess to it, thanks to the buttermilk and sour cream – which both help the increased moisture in the cake too.
Traditionally, red velvet cakes get their bright red color from red food coloring. However, as you saw in the ingredient list above, I’m not using any food coloring. Instead, this cake gets this beautiful, rich red color from the red velvet emulsion. Emulsions are like extracts but are water-based instead of alcohol-based. This particular emulsion also gives the cake a boost of flavor. But if you can’t find red velvet emulsion, you can always use red food coloring.
The result is a super moist and fluffy red velvet cake with the slightest hint of cocoa and citrus (a flavor element from the emulsion).
Cream Cheese Icing
I thought about making this into a layered cake with cream cheese buttercream but opted to go a simpler route with the bundt cake – which made me want to switch up the icing too. The recipe you’ll see for the cream cheese icing is my regular cream cheese buttercream but with melted butter to make it thin. If you want to use a traditional buttercream, just leave the butter cold!
Cake Making Tips
Don’t forget to follow my go-to tips for getting your cakes to rise and bake well:
- Preheat your oven for 30 minutes prior to baking.
- Beat the butter and sugar for a few minutes on medium-high speed, until light and fluffy.
- Use good quality pans like Fat Daddio.
- Spray your pans with nonstick spray and line with parchment paper.
- Don’t overmix your cake batter once you add the dry ingredients.
- Use room temperature wet ingredients.
- Use fresh baking powder.
- Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out with a few moist crumbs on it.
More Cakes You’ll Love
- Red Velvet Cake with chocolate sour cream buttercream and marshmallow filling
- Pink Velvet Cake with raspberry buttercream
- Chocolate Strawberry Nutella Cake
Red Velvet Cake Bundt Cake
Ingredients
FOR THE CAKE
- 1/2 cup (113 g) unsalted butter at room temperature
- 3/4 cup (165 g) light brown sugar packed
- 1 cup (200 g) granulated sugar
- 2 1/2 tbsp (35g) red velvet emulsion (I use LorAnn Oils Emulsions)
- 3 large eggs at room temperature
- 2 1/4 cups (270 g) all-purpose flour
- 2 tbsp (14.75 g) cocoa powder
- 1 tsp (5.6 g) salt
- 1 1/2 cups (360 g) buttermilk at room temperature
- 1/4 cup (60 g) sour cream at room temperature
- 1 tbsp (14.37 g) vinegar
- 1 1/4 tsp (5 g) baking soda
FOR THE ICING
- 3/4 cup (169.5 g) unsalted butter melted
- 3 oz (85 g) cream cheese
- 3 cups (375 g) powdered sugar measured and then sifted
- 1/2 tsp (2.1 g) pure vanilla extract
- Pinch of salt
Instructions
FOR THE CAKE
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Spray the a bundt cake well with nonstick spray. Set aside.
- In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar, and red velvet flavor. Beat the ingredients on medium-high speed for about 5 minutes, until the mixture is light in color and slightly increased in volume.
- Lower the speed and add the eggs, one at a time, mixing until each egg is incorporated before adding the next.
- In a separate bowl, sift the flour and cocoa powder. Sprinkle the salt on top of the dry ingredients and whisk until combined.
- With the stand mixer on low speed, alternately add the dry ingredients and the buttermilk into the butter mixture, beginning and ending with dry ingredients. Mix until just incorporated. Fold in the sour cream.
- In a small bowl, combine the vinegar and baking soda until it fizzes and then add to the batter. Stir until blended.
- Bake for 55 to 65 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a few moist crumbs on it.
- Let the cake cool completely in the bundt pan before turning it over to remove the cake.
FOR THE ICING
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine all of the ingredients. Stir on low speed until the powdered sugar is mixed in. Turn the mixer to medium speed and mix for a couple minutes.
- Pour over the bundt cake.
- If you want a thick buttercream, instead of a thin icing, you can make the same recipe but use cold butter.
This looks amazing, will this recipe work for cupcakes too?
Yes! Keep your eye on them! It should make about 24 cupcakes.
How much red food coloring would I use if I don’t have the emulsion?
1 tsp.
This cake was a big hit with everyone who tried it, someone even asked for the recipe 👍🏼
Yay! Love hearing that!
Cake is delicious, but the icing was not runny and I couldn’t pour it over the cake despite using melted butter. How do you recommend making the icing more runny?
You could add a little heavy whipping cream to it.
I had the same problem. Looking at some of your other icing/glaze recipes, it seems this one is off…I tried adding heavy cream and could never get a pourable consistency. Were we supposed to melt the cream cheese first? Once you add the cream cheese, it all firms up. I ended up piping it on. It does taste wonderful though!!
Can I use salted butter in place of the salt? I know you recommend Fat Daddios pans, but I have Wilton. Do I need to make any adjustments? I am a Utah girl transplanted in Texas. It’s great here, but I miss the mountains and Orson Gygi’s!!! Your classes are on my bucket list 😉💗
If you use salted butter, reduce salt by half in recipe. It’s worth making the pan switch for sure!
Hi! Can we use this recipe for a circular or rectangular cake molds ? If so, what would be the baking time and temperature ? We were hopping to use your delicious recipe for my Nieces 13th birthday! Thank you!
Any alterations to the cook time if I want to make it in cake rounds for my friends birthday? This recipe popped up at the perfect time!
It will probably be less time, keep your eye on it.
I made these in bundlette pans – makes 12 and they are delicious. I made the “glaze” and despite the fact that I weighed all the ingredients I ended up putting it in a piping bag because it was not pourable.
Love this recipe! Big hit tonight for valentines dinner with the family. Very light and airy cake with a great texture and flavor. I didn’t have any sour cream so I subbed crème fraiche and it turned out perfect. I also chose to do cold butter so I could pipe the frosting on and it turned out great! I would love to add chocolate chips net time but not sure how to do that without melting them. Any tips?
If you want to add them to the batter I would use mini choc chips. Dust them a bit in flour and then fold them into the batter.
I had the same problem. Looking at some of your other icing/glaze recipes, it seems this one is off…I tried adding heavy cream and could never get a pourable consistency. Were we supposed to melt the cream cheese first? Once you add the cream cheese, it all firms up. I ended up piping it on. It does taste wonderful though!!
Will this convert to a 9×13 pan? If so, what would the bake time and temp be?
Yes you can! It would be same temp but probably around 40 minutes.
If you do not have buttermilk, can you use regular whole milk with a touch of vinegar?
Yes that works great.
My cream cheese butter cream was granny. Mixed for about 3 minutes. Any idea how to fix this?
Did it seem kind of dry? If so, you could add a couple tablespoons of melted butter.