Originally it was supposed to be a cobbler. A pepper cobbler to be exact. I wanted to do a vegetable dessert and I wanted to use red peppers because of their sweetness and their mild spicy bite. The first idea was to do a pepper cobbler but that worked out about as well as a rain hat made of cake. I was arguing with Danielle, who does daytime prep, over whether we should just ditch the idea of doing a red pepper dessert entirely and we were trying to think of all the possible things you could do with cake to make it red and suddenly it just popped up: red velvet cake…red pepper velvet cake.

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To make it we basically follow the standard red velvet cake recipe (minus the red food coloring) but we add red pepper reduction as the liquid in the recipe. Getting that red pepper reduction is where the hard work comes. First we juice some red peppers. Then we put the red pepper juice on the stove and reduce it. And reduce it. And reduce it. A case of red peppers will give us a gallon of juice. That gallon of juice will yield about three cups of red pepper reduction.

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The pulped peppers don’t go to waste, however, because we dehydrate them into a red pepper powder that’s sprinkled over the icing. The icing is regular white chocolate icing (white chocolate because red pepper cake traditionally has white icing) and we serve it with a white chocolate and peanut ice cream with some peanut brittle. Peppers are often matched with peanuts in some African cuisines and it’s a surprising flavor combination that works really well. The cake sits on a streak of red pepper jam.

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The final result: a cake that gives you the pure taste of red peppers without the crunchy, watery texture. The slightly spicy, peppery, invigorating red pepper flavor is brought out by the smooth, creamy sweetness of the cake and cut with just a bit of the earthy, woodsy taste of peanuts. It took a long time to get there but the results have been more than worth it.

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