Red Waldorf Cake Fail

I was in the mood for baking a cake, so I decided to make the Red Waldorf cake from my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. This is basically a red velvet cake, but I guess the recipe originated from the Waldorf-Astoria hotel (don't quote me on that). I cut the recipe in half, and used the neon food coloring I had on hand instead of just red. Since the recipe called for a 1/4 cup of food coloring mixed with the cocoa powder, I barely had enough of the neon food coloring I had on hand. Since I combined all of the colors together, the cake ended up not being red:

And it turned out quite dry. I made some sort of frosting that had a lot of butter in it. Overall, this cake was not tasty. I think I need to stick with the recipe from now on...but we'll see how long that happens.