I just made a Red Velvet cake and I'm looking for hints how to keep the cake from bleeding into the butter cream icing when I ice it.
1) Bake your cake and chill it over night. 2) Crumb Coat the Cake meaning lightly ice the cake smoothly. Chill it for two hours. 3) Ice the cake with a more generous amount of icing.
Here is my best hint for you but sometimes it still has a few leaks or stains. I have had 2 perfect cakes out of 3 though doing this. When the cake is cooled completely and set you do a thin layer of icing over the whole cake. It can be full of crumbs and the cake color can show through. By doing this you are creating a crumb coat. Really cram the icing into every part of the cake so that there are no spaces of pure cake. Then you let the cake sit until it is dry to the touch. This won't make the actual cake dry because you have filled any air pockets with icing. Its hard to do this with store-bought icing, home made works best. It might also help if for your crumb coat you use a shortening based decorator type butter cream for your crumb coat because the the butter can't really sit out and just doesn't give you that dry finish you need. You can do this more then once. the more packed down the crumbs are the less likely it is to stain. Follow with a thick coat of icing, pouring it on top and working it down the sides. Red velvet is so hard even fondant can stain. Down here in the south where we are currently stationed, they use cream cheese icing and lay it on really thick. They coat the sides in crushed pecans and decorate the top. I think the cream cheese is so dense it does not stain as easily. Hope this can help, sorry if I was not clear enough.