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!

The BEST doctored Red Velvet Cake recipe by MyCakeSchool.com! Tastes like a scratch recipe and is super moist and flavorful! MyCakeSchool.com.

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!)

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.

The BEST doctored cake mix Red Velvet Cake recipe! Super moist, delicious, and fantastic with Cream Cheese Frosting! MyCakeSchool.com.

Red Velvet Cake - Doctored Cake Mix Recipe

This delicious Red Velvet Cake is super moist and has just the right amount of chocolate flavor. I love red velvet year-round, but especially for Christmas and winter gatherings!

Ingredients

1 box yellow cake mix, sifted (15.25 box mix) plus 6 Tablespoons (45g) flour ( I used Duncan Hines Classic Yellow Mix)
½ cup (100g) granulated sugar
5 Tablespoons (24g) unsweetened cocoa powder ( I sift the cocoa , then measure or weight
½ cup (107g) vegetable oil
3 large eggs
2 teaspoons (8g) vanilla extract
½ 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)

Instructions

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 ¼ 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!

Thanks for stopping by!

151 Comments

Can you make this into a pink velvet by just using pink coloring instead of red?

Hi Lindsay, you can experiment using pink coloring but you may want to just go with a white cake recipe like our white almond sour cream cake, etc. since the cocoa in this recipe with give you more of a chocolatey pink color...which may not be what you are going for.

Hi! Did you use Classic Yellow or Butter Golden Duncan Hines Mix? Thank you.?

We used Duncan Hines Classic Yellow

Hi, do you have a doctored red velvet cake/cupcake recipe using a red velvet cake mix?

Thank you!

Hi Alexina, This is our preferred recipe but I think you could use a red velvet cake mix, just leave out the red food coloring.

Great. Thank you!

Can you use this recipe with DH red velvet cake mix?
What would you leave out or add?
Need to make 2- 10 squares and 1- 8 inch square cakes.

Hi Sue, We prefer using the Duncan Yellow Cake mix but you can use the DH Red Velvet, just leave out the red food coloring. Here is a link to the Wilton Chart for batter amounts, in case you need it http://www.wilton.com/cake-serving-guide/cms-baking-serving-guide.html

Hi BeBe/Melissa could this recipe do without the sour cream? This ingredient is pretty costly where I'm from, so I'm wondering if I could eliminate it totally. Or is there some other substitute for it?

Hi Jessie, you could substitute yogurt, preferably greek yogurt if possible. If this is also too expensive, here is a link to other substitutions that might work for you, though I have not tried these. Let me know what works for you if you give it a try.