Blue Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting and Blueberries

Well, here it is! The BLUE VELVET CAKE for Joe's Birthday!

This recipe was featured on 

Sweet As Sugar Cookies!

I'm not a huge cake maker, but I love to decorate. I don't know why I get cupcakes so much but I can't get cakes. I got this recipe from Adventures in Cooking and if I have not told you before, I am HORRIBLE at following directions. HORRIBLE, I say! I feel like the instructions to this cake were crazy, first off, not in order and just all out confusing. But that could just be me; like I said, I'm horrible at following directions. I never have butter or eggs at room temp, because I don't plan me baking, it just happens! I don't do all this mixing the dry ingredients and wet separately (unless I'm hand mixing) because I have an amazing mixer which mixes everything rather exceptionally! Anyways, moral of the story... horrible at reading instructions. 

Review of the cake: It came out REALLLLLLLY spongy, it needed a lot more cocoa powder, after velvet cake is basically a chocolate-y cake with tons of dye and needs to be smooth! It's called a VELVET cake not sponge cake! Other than that, it came out really good! Especially the frosting and blueberry syrup! SO I have made some corrections to the ingredients. If you have anymore suggestions or corrections, I'd love to hear them!

Ok onto the cake!

What you'll need for Blue Vevlet Cake:

1 1/4 Cups Cake Flour, sifted

1/2 Cup and 3/4 Cups Granulated Sugar

1/3 cup Cocoa Powder (This is my addition, regular says 1Tbsp)

11 Egg Whites, room temperature (NOTE: this equals roughly 6 eggs, with yolk. ***If you only do egg whites, add in vegetable oil to make it more tender and moist, not tough and spongy***)

3 Teaspoons Vanilla Extract

1 1/2 Teaspoons Cream of Tartar

2 oz. Blue Food Coloring

1/4 Teaspoon Salt

Fresh Blueberries

What you need to do for Blue Velvet Cake:

-Preheat the oven to 375 degrees 

-In a medium-sized bowl, or your mixer, sift together the flour, 1/2 cup of the sugar, and the cocoa powder. 

-In a large bowl, beat together the egg whites, vanilla extract, cream of tartar and salt until they begin to hold soft peaks. 

-Beat in the remaining 3/4 cups sugar and the blue food coloring until the mixture begins to hold stiff peaks, about 4 minutes or so.

-Slowly fold in 1/4 cup of the flour mixture at a time. Make sure to fold, not to stir. 

-Grease very well two 9 inch Spring Form cake pans. Pour batter into pans.

-Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out of the middle clean

Meanwhile, make the Cream Cheese Frosting that I love oh so much and the blueberry syrup.

Cream Cheese Frosting is HERE

What you need for the Blueberry Syrup:

1 Cup Blueberries, fresh or frozen (but not frost bitten), pureed

1/2 Cup Granulated Sugar

1/4 Cup Water

1 Cup Blueberry Jam, good quality

1 tbsp cornstarch

3-4 tbsp blueberry syrup, cooled

What you need to do for the Blueberry Syrup:

-In a small saucepan, cook the blueberries, sugar and water over low heat for about 8 minutes, or until the sugar has completely dissolved. (I boiled my blueberries since they were frozen, then pureed them)

-Add in jam, make sure to thoroughly mix in. From here, make it to your taste, add  in more sugar or maybe more water. Up to you! 

-Cool your blueberry syrup (I added ice cubes in it)

-Get your cornstarch and mix in with the cooled blueberry syrup (image below)

-Stir in with the rest of the blueberry syrup to help thicken.

-Pour into a serving bowl and place in the refrigerator to chill until serving time.

Cake, Continued...

-Once the cake is done, remove it from the oven and allow to cool for about 15 minutes. 

-Unclasp the hook on the spring form pan, let cool completely.

- Did your cake come out with an ugly 'hill' on top? Carefully and evenly slice it off! If it's not that even, its ok! Use it as your bottom instead! 

-Get the Cake Stand, or if you don't have one, use a flat plate, wide enough to hold the cake plus frosting on the sides, that you can serve it off of.

- Place one cake evenly in the middle of cake stand. 

-FROSTING TIME! YAY!

- Place a HEAPING scoop on top of cake. Spread evenly on top of the cake, not on the sides yet. 

Here is how to spread frosting, just FYI:

 Start with a heaping scoop

Spread to one side, in a slow, smooth motion.

Without stopping, spread in the opposite direction in the same slow, smooth motion.

Keep going back and forth, slowly, smoothly, whilst moving your motions north or south, side to side.

This is how it should start looking.

Smoothed out dip in the middle, swaying side to side.

Once you get the middle evenly spread, spread out the edges. 

Here you can omit extra frosting if this is the middle layer.

Place evenly, so that they're are aligned perfectly the other cake on top of the frosting.

Place other heaping scoopful on top of the cake and spread evenly, the same way I showed you earlier.

On the top layer, spread it out to the edges. keep your hand still as you move your cake stand in a spinning motion. Spread it all out evenly. Don't worry about the edges of the cake, because we're going to have more frosting put on it to hide it!  

Here's a helpful tip for smoothness:

Dip your spatula into hot water, whip off excess water, then spread out the frosting thinly, one more time. This will give it a smoother look!

I don't know if you can see it well, but the middle 'swipe' is from the hot spatula; you can compare and contrast the difference. 

Frosting gun time!

Here's a tip to help keep the frosting in the baggy, if you use them.

A lot of people, including me for the longest time, don't know that you can twist the top and it won't squeeze out! Very effective! 

Remember:

Wipe off the extra frosting smudges on the side!

Make decor however you'd like.

I chose to make a cute and simple beaded outlining.

So, once you have outlined it (Make sure for the top/cake edge don't make the outlining somewhat diagonal, but flat on the surface but on the edge, if that make sense.)

Spread your syrup on the surface with a spoon. It's ok if the syrup falls to the edge, unless you don't want it to, but I did :)

Then add blueberries! You can spread them, but I had to leave room for 26 candles!

 Serve at room temperature with a drizzle of blueberry syrup over each individual cake slice, if you'd like!

Enjoy!

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