Mother's Oh & Ah! Cake

A Vintage Red-Tinted Chocolate Sour Cream Cake

This is the kind of cake that lived in handwritten church-cookbook notebooks before red velvet had a name. Mother’s Oh and Ah! is essentially a chocolate-and-sour cream layer cake with a teaspoon of red food coloring to give it that signature reddish-brown color, a precursor to today’s red velvet but with a deeper, fuller chocolate punch from melted unsweetened chocolate rather than just cocoa powder.

The sour cream is what makes this cake. It tenderizes the crumb so completely that the texture is closer to a fluffy butter cake than a typical chocolate one. Cake flour adds to that softness, and the alternating addition of flour and sour cream is the technique that keeps everything emulsified without overdeveloping gluten.

Pro Tips

• Let the chocolate-water mixture cool to room temperature before adding the food coloring and baking soda. Hot chocolate will deactivate the leavener and dull the color.
• Sift the cake flour after measuring. Cake flour clumps in the bag; sifting prevents lumps and gives a finer crumb.
• Alternating flour and sour cream is non-negotiable here. Dumping it all at once breaks the emulsion and makes a denser cake.
• Test for doneness at 40 minutes for a 9 by 13. Pull when a toothpick comes out with a few moist crumbs.
• Cool completely before frosting. A cream cheese or fluffy white frosting is the traditional pair.

Variations

• Skip the food coloring for a more classic chocolate sour cream cake.
• Frost with classic cream cheese frosting for a true red velvet feel.
• Bake as cupcakes for 20 to 22 minutes for individual portions.