WINTER PARK, Fla. — There's red velvet cake, and then there's redvelvet cake — the kind impossible to say without extra emphasis.

We found that italicized version at Winter Park's The Glass Knife, a dessert shop also offering savories.

"It's super special because, first and foremost, Steve Brown, our owner, this is his mother's recipe," said sous chef Jade Bowser. "We've just given it our modern take. We've jazzed it up a little bit with some Glass Knife gold."

That gold is literal, leading to their first tip.

Tip #1: Decorate icing with gold flakes

"Our 23-karat edible gold leaf (is the best part)," Bowser said, smiling. "Not 24K. Not 14K."

The gold comes in loose leaf booklets. Bowser and her team tears off little flakes using tweezers and drops them lightly onto the icing.

"We really love the movement of it," she said. "It moves, kind of, in the wind."

Tip #2: Chocolate Gold Sprinkles

Forget rainbow sprinkles. Think richer.

"We use gold powder that's edible in these lovely sprinkles," she said, referring to the cake's additional decorations. "So what we're going to do is create this beautiful swirl around the top and side of our cake. This is one of our signature, classic cakes. It has been around since the beginning."

Tip #3: Simple syrup soaker

"We like to soak (the three cake layers) with simple syrup," she said. "That just ensures that it's going to be really rich and moist when you go to eat that delicious slice of cake."

Bowser used what looks like a plastic shower head to gentle squirt the syrup over the cake layers before stacking them.

Tip #4: Bonus layer of filling

It ain't only about cream cheese, folks.

"We have our cheesecake layer," she showed us, pulling out a disc of honest-to-goodness New York cheesecake. "We take the whole disc of cheesecake and plop it right in the middle of our delicious red velvet cake."

Tip #5: Buttercream "glue"

Bowser says you can't just stack each cake layer on top of the cheesecake and cream cheese layers. Instead, she creates a circle around the edges of each layer with a piping of buttercream.

"So you won't see any cheesecake; it won't squeeze out," she said, once the icing is applied. "That way we put this (buttercream) right here."

Tip #5.5: Vanilla bean

OK, we had to throw in one more. There's something special inside of their cream cheese icing, as made noticeable by tiny black specs.

"This is vanilla bean paste that we use to give the delicious vanilla flavor in it," Bowser said.

The Glass Knife is located at 276 S Orlando Ave, Winter Park. It's open daily 7 a.m. — 10 p.m.