Red Velvet cake: We're sweet again on an old classic

The cupcake craze of the last few years has brought bakers' creativity to the fore, allowing them to show off exotic and elaborate recipes on a tiny scale.

But the trend also seems to have revived a taste for an old American classic: Red Velvet, a mild chocolate cake dyed red, usually with food coloring, and layered with sweet cream-cheese frosting.

And, as bakeries throughout the region can attest, people go wild for it.

"People are always asking for them," said Elizabeth Halen, owner of the Flying Monkey Bakery at Reading Terminal.

Red velvet cupcakes top sales lists, and more people are ordering red velvet cakes for celebrations, including weddings, said Amy Edelman, owner of Night Kitchen bakery in Chestnut Hill.

The resurging popularity has led to many red-velvet-inspired creations.

The Flying Monkey, as well as Starbucks, makes red velvet whoopee pies. Supper, a restaurant on South Street, serves red velvet waffles with cream cheese mousse, toasted pecans, and bourbon cherries.

"They're incredibly popular," owner and chef Mitch Prensky said of the waffles, which have been on the weekend brunch menu for about a year and a half. "It's kind of taken on a life of its own."

Ben and Jerry's recently released a Red-Velvet-Cake-flavored ice cream: a red velvet cake-batter ice cream with red velvet cake pieces and a cream cheese frosting swirl.

"We've seen the flavor flying off the shelves," said Sean Greenwood, a spokesman for the company. The flavor, which came out in February, is already selling on par with classics like Cherry Garcia and Cookie Dough, he said.

And locally, in Berwyn, Handel's Ice Cream recently added Red Velvet to its long list of flavors.

There are red velvet truffles, red velvet lattes, and red velvet hot chocolate. There's even red velvet milk, which Halen saw at a Target store.

She didn't buy it.

"I was disgusted," she said. "I just thought, 'There's no bottom to this trend.' "

Maybe it's red velvet's mystique that makes it so desirable.

Both the South and the North lay claim to its invention. The Waldorf Astoria in New York City says it created the cake in the 1920s and has been serving it ever since.

But some doubt the luxury hotel's story, as the cake has always been associated with Southern food.

"Old Southern ladies have been making this for a long time," Prensky said.