Blue velvet aint just a song (it's a pretty damn good cake!)

Today little man is 13  months old! Since I didn't post about his awesome cake on his bday I'll tell you all about it now! But first the recipe.

Blueberry Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1¾ cup granulated sugar
4 large eggs, room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk
½ teaspoon salt
1½ pints blueberries
Blue Food Coloring
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1 8oz package cream cheese, room temperature
3 cups confectioner's sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease 2 9" cake pans with butter or cooking spray. 

In a bowl, combine flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt.
In another bowl beat the butter until light and creamy.
Slowly add the sugar and cream until light and fluffy.
Add the eggs one at a time, fully incorporate each egg before adding the next.
Add the vanilla, and fully incorporate.
Add the blue food coloring to desired color. (I didn't use any and my cake was more light brownish blue. more on that in a bit )
Add the flour mixture in 3 parts, alternating with the addition of milk- add flour, then milk, then flour, then milk, then flour last. Make sure to incorporate each before adding the next.
Mix in the blueberries gently with a spatula.
Divide the batter between the 2 cake pans.
Bake for 30–35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.
Let the cake completely cool before frosting.

For the frosting beat the butter and cream cheese with a hand mixer until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the confectioner's sugar slowly and fully incorporate. Add the vanilla and fully incorporate.
Frost the cakes when completely cool.

So I let the cake cool overnight which was both a great idea and a horrible one.  The cakes were nice and cool. But I left them in the pans overnight so I totally butchered them trying get them out of the pans.  Word to the wise.  If you are going to cool the cake overnight leave it on a plate or a cooling rack not the pan.  In my defense..i thought I'd get ahead of the game and make the cake the night before.  Then by the  time the cake was baked I was ready for bed. I just couldn't wait long enough for it to cool enough to get it out of the pan.

let me get back to the beginning... for little man's first birthday I decided to make his cake. I wanted to make a healthier cake. so I was looking for low sugar options. I found a ton of smash cakes, gluten free, dairy free, paleo, and a couple of cool ones that were just fresh fruit.  this was on one of the slide shows for first cake suggestions, it's not really any of the above but it's an awesome cake. so can I just take a second to say I just don't get the whole smash cake thing? i mean yeah it's cute, but do we really need a whole cake just to get smashed instead of enjoyed and eaten. that being said, when i made the cake i made 1 1/2 the recipe so i could make a cake and a tray of oversized cupcakes so little man had his own "cake". so we had leftover cake and a few cupcakes left as well.

also, i swear i read the recipe before i went to the store so i could get everything. (i mean buttermilk is not something i usually have on hand.) but somehow i missed where it said blue food coloring. so our cake was a not really blue. also the recipe says a pint a a half of blueberries so i bought 2 containers. so a pint is 16 oz. some how the blueberries i bought were 6 oz containers. i thought they were sold in pint containers... so i was a little short on blueberries.... luckily i had some frozen ones. so what i did was i thawed a mushed the frozen blueberries and added just the frozen ones when the recipe called for the blue food coloring. it didn't make the cake very blue but it had a slight tint. also i got organic blueberries. now, i'm really not an organic person. for the most part i could give a crap. but there is the dirty dozen list of of the worst produce that you really should be organic. previously blueberries were on the list. so i look at that when getting things for little man. nothing but the best for him!!)

so i gotta say the cake was awesome!!!! and the icing was amazing! although it's kind of hard to go wrong with a cream cheese frosting. sadly, little man didn't think so. he didn't want to try it! and he didn't smash it. i even put decorative cheerios on his little personal cake! maybe next year. 

and i don't even have a pic of the cake! i wanted to take some, but then the mister was like are you going to bring the cake out? so i brought out the  cake, we sang happy birthday, and that was that.