Red Velvet Cake with Butter Cream Icing

I've posted a red velvet recipe before. I'm not exactly sure what to do with it now. It was good, but it wasn't exactly right - a little too chocolately and missing something. I suppose I'll leave it up for people who are less concerned about authenticity. I think this recipe is the one I've been looking for (finally!).

I cut down the red food colouring, so the colour wasn't exactly right. If you also cut back on it, be sure to add water to compensate. I failed to do the compensation right (ounces confuse me!) and the cake wasn't quite as ridiculously moist as it should've been. The original recipe calls for crisco in the batter, but I used butter. I may try the crisco at some point, but I think the butter is still an acceptable and authentic substitution.

This recipe uses the traditional butter cream icing (which requires more than a little patience!). The thread linked below discusses cream cheese briefly. Cream cheese frosting would definitely be easier, but is a newer adaptation (and I blame the usage of cream cheese frosting for my long grudge against cream cheese that I've only recently let go of!).

Red Velvet Cake with Butter Cream Icing (happily found on chowhound!)

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/4 cup red food colouring (or a reduced amount with water)
2 heaping tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/4 cups sifted cake flour
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Cream butter and sugar with a mixer.
3. Add eggs one at a time and beat for 30 seconds.
4. Add cocoa and red food colouring, mix.
5. Add flour, salt and buttermilk, mix (I whisked together the flour and salt first, the slowly mixed in 1/3 of flour, 1/2 of buttermilk, 1/3 flour, 1/2 milk, 1/3 flour). Remove batter from mixer.
6. Sprinkle with baking soda, pour vinegar over batter and add vanilla. Stir. DO NOT BEAT - (don't over stir - it can make the cake tough).
7. Pour batter into 2 - 9 inch cake pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 min.

Icing
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 cup whole milk
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Mix cornstarch with milk in a small saucepan. Cook over medium-low heat until thick, whisking the entire time. (Be patient it takes a while to thicken!) Set aside to cool.
2. In a stand mixer bowl, cream butter and sugar until fluffy.
3. Add vanilla and cooked cornstarch mixture slowly. Beat until it feels like whipped cream (about 10 minutes. Don't worry. It will look like the mixture will never come together and taste grainy. Just keep beating. The transformation is quite amazing.)