Pioneer in a Year: Red Velvet? We think not.

As graduates of the esteemed Kansas State University, we could not leave this lovely Red Velvet cake a Boomer-Sooner red. Or worse. Nebraska-Cornhusker red. That's right. We said it.

We made P-Dub's Red Velvet Cake (p. 233) into a lovely Powercat Purple. That's a capital 'p' on purple. That's right. We said it.

We started by blending together shortening and sugar. And brown sugar 'cuz we done run out of white sugar. Par for the course.

Next, we sifted together flour and salt.

In a separate bowl, buttermilk, eggs, vanilla, vinegar and baking soda were blended.

We slowly added the flour mixture and the buttermilk mixture by alternating turns, until both were thoroughly combined into the shortening mixture. You still with us? Good. We're not either.

In a tiny green bowl, we placed cocoa powder and Jo's fantastic purple food coloring.

This coloring was blended into the cake mixture. We kept taking pictures of it because it was so pretty to see the marbling of the food coloring and the batter.

But, alas, it was not purple enough for our genes. At this point, we had run out of our choice food coloring, so we began to alternate blue and pink dyes until...

...we giddily reached our ideal Powercat Purple.

The batter was poured into two, round cake pans and baked for approximately 25 minutes at 350 degrees.

Meanwhile, we started in on the icing. Two of the world's greatest things, cream cheese and butter, were whipped into a blissful matrimonial state. We also sifted powdered sugar and added it to the mix, along with a little salt. The final ingredient for the frosting was vanilla.

We decided a royal-purple Powercat cake deserved a great display. Jo literally dug to the back of her cabinet to pull out a crystal cake stand. Oh, so shiny and sparkly. We were entranced. We could have stared at it all evening, but our men demanded cake. Back to work.