Red Velvet Cake, Anyone?

On Easter Sunday, I invited a few friends over for dinner. The usual two couples we host every year and there was also potential for two newbies to show up. One of them was to bring dessert if she came. She didn't. So I had to figure out something to make.

Originally, I was going to attempt Carrot Cake. There's a great recipe in this Cake & Icings cookbook my friend Kristen gave me from Williams Sonoma. Luckily, I proved to be a thinking person for once and decided that it was too involved to make from scratch just a few hours before my guests were to arrive, what with having to make everything else and clean.

That, and I couldn't find the cookbook. But I have every confidence that even if I could have put my hands on it, logic would have prevailed.

Second choice was this Amaretto Cake that I found on AllRecipes.com a few years back. Pretty simple to make, yet tasty. Unfortunately, I didn't have the yellow cake mix it called for. The white one I did have on hand probably would have worked fine, but I decided instead to finally make the Red Velvet cake mix I had. What better time than the present, right?

Since I had planned on making the Carrot Cake, I had a lot of cream cheese on hand and figured I would make some sort of icing of that nature. Instead, I made this lighter, non-cream cheese version I found listed under this Red Velvet Cake recipe, also on AllRecipes, that called for 'cooking' flour and milk. It turned out pretty well, so I thought I would share should you find yourself making a Red Velvet Cake one of these holidays.