I’m going to be honest, this was supposed to be a red velvet cake for my dad’s birthday, but after I started making this cake I discovered that I was clean out of red food coloring. I though maraschino cherry juice would be a proper substitute and it turns out it wasn’t quite right, whoops. So I ended up with a pink-ish hued cake that tastes faintly of cherries, but is still dang good. The real saving grace was using a cashew cream frosting that ended up so creamy/dreamy that my parents and ended up standing around the cake plate scraping the icing up that had pooled around the edges of the cake. I get my love for icing from my momma, that’s for sure!

If you want to go ahead and turn this into a red velvet cake, you can add a teaspoon or so of red food coloring to give it that distinct red hue. If not, the layers of cocoa cake ended up perfectly tender and sweet without the coloring and I would highly recommend not skipping the icing, no way, no how. I would recommend using a high powered blender to make the icing, if you have it, but a food processor should get everything pretty smooth too. (Still loving my Vitamix for this stuff!). Next time I’m out of food coloring maybe I’ll try beet juice? I haven’t tried this method so if you have, let me know!