This Red Velvet Cake Doctored Cake Mix Recipe belongs in your recipe file of favorites! It is amazingly moist, delicious, and has just the right amount of chocolate flavor.
Add a little cream cheese frosting, and it is pure heaven! It’s no wonder that Red Velvet Cake has long been a beloved classic southern dessert!
We have a Scratch Red Velvet Cake recipe that we love, but we were determined to find a doctored cake mix version that we loved just as much. This is it!
When I brought this leftover doctored cake mix version of Red Velvet Cake home to my family, they absolutely loved it, and couldn’t believe that it wasn’t a scratch recipe. This cake disappeared in record time!
We have experimented with using actual Red Velvet Cake Mix in doctored mix recipes in the past and were never happy with the flavor. This is why we chose to use Yellow Cake Mix as the base, and simply add red coloring.
**A note about the color: this Red Velvet Cake is not a vibrant red…it is more of a “chocolate red”. The lighting in the photo above makes it look a bit more red. Red Velvet cakes come in all shades of red depending on how much cocoa the recipe calls for, and of course the amount of red coloring used.
We loved the chocolate flavor of this cake so much that we didn’t want to remove any of the cocoa. However, if you’d prefer a deeper red, you can remove some of the cocoa and add more coloring. It’s up to you! (But we love it just as it is!)
We loved the chocolate flavor of this cake so much that we didn’t want to remove any of the cocoa. However, if you’d prefer a deeper red, you can remove some of the cocoa and add more coloring. It’s up to you! (But we love it just as it is!)
Red Velvet Cake and Cream Cheese Frosting go hand in hand. You can find our favorite Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe here!: Pipeable Cream Cheese Frosting.
Red Velvet Cake- A Doctored Cake Mix Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 box yellow cake mix, sifted (15.25 box mix) plus 6 Tablespoons (45g) flour ( I used Duncan Hines Classic Yellow Mix)
- 1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar
- 5 Tablespoons (24g) unsweetened cocoa powder ( I sift the cocoa , then measure or weight
- 1/2 cup (107g) vegetable oil
- 3 large eggs
- 2 teaspoons (8g) vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup (121g) milk
- 1 cup (242g) sour cream
- 2 Tablespoons (24g) red food coloring ( if you want a brighter red color to your cake, add 3 Tablespoons)
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- Grease and flour 2 eight inch round pans
- In the bowl of your mixer, place the cake mix plus flour, sugar, sifted cocoa. Whisk to blend these ingredients together. Then add all the remaining ingredients. Begin mixing on low speed, increasing to medium speed for 1 minute. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl. Beat at medium speed for 1 more minute (longer if using a hand mixer.
- Pour into prepared pans and bake for 30 - 35 minutes (check at 30 minutes). The cake is done when a toothpick comes out clean or with a just a few crumbs attached. Let cool in pans for 10 minutes then turn out.
- Makes 6 1/4 cups batter
- Works well for cupcakes
- We frosted with our Pipeable Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe
*You may like to try our fantastic Red Velvet Cake recipe from scratch as we mentioned above! Print this one out for later: Delicious Red Velvet Cake from Scratch
Don’t forget to check out our full collection of favorite cake and frosting recipes in our Recipes Section! Or, for free, fun, and simple cake decorating tutorials, don’t miss our Free Cake Tutorials Section!
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Thanks for stopping by!
Hi Bebe,
Thank you or answering
Me!!!
I decided to make it easy on myself and do a half batch. I measure everything by grams, so dividing io in half was easy. It made 11 cupcakes.
I forgot to add the red color, but the plain one we tasted very good. I’m using up some of my cream cheese frosting in the freezer, which is great.
I’m going to deliver them to a few doctor offices tomorrow.
Hi!
Will this hold up under fondant?
Thanks!
Hi Allyson, Yes, it should hold up to fondant with no problem.
Hi instead of the sour cream can i use white chocolate pudding instead?
Hi Germaine, I think the recipe probably could be adjusted to use white chocolate pudding but I have not experimented so I can’t be certain of the the adjustments. Sour cream is often used in cake mix recipes using pudding. If you do not have sour cream, you can substitute with regular or greek yogurt.