Blue Velvet Cupcakes

Recipe Review: OMG BLUE CUPCAKES! and they taste yummy too

I needed to test a red velvet recipe for some cupcakes that i'll be doing next month, and my friends birthday was this week so it was perfect timing. Well except for the fact that my friend is a guy- and red velvet cupcakes aren't really that manly. The solution- Blue Velvet Cupcakes! Ever since I stumbled upon the recipe foron Sprinkles Bakes I have been dying to try making them. I was a bit dubious- Are they really going to turn out that color? Were the colors of the photos on the blog tweaked? I had baked Blackberry Cupcakes this year an while the batter was an amazing purple color it changed a lot while baking. I went into this not really knowing what to expect. The recipe is the same as the traditional red velvet except it uses blue food coloring instead of red. The cupcakes turned out a dark denim blue on the outside and a brighter blue once you bit into them. I was very pleased with the results.

Blue Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

adapted from: Sprinkle Bakes

Cake:

2 cups sugar

½ pound (2 sticks) butter, at room temperature

2 eggs

1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon Wilton royal blue gel food coloring

1 small dab of Wilton violet gel food coloring

2½ cups cake flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup buttermilk

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon vinegar

Frosting:

8oz package cream cheese, softened

2 sticks butter, softened

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare cupcake pan with liners.

In a large bowl, cream the sugar and butter, mix until light and fluffy. Add the eggs 1 at a time, mixing well after each addition. In a small bowl mix cocoa, vanilla and food colorings together to form a paste. Add to sugar mixture and mix well. Sift together flour and salt. Add flour mixture to the sugar mixture in two batches alternating with buttermilk. In a small bowl, combine baking soda and vinegar and add to batter. Mix. Batter will be thicker than a mix cake, and slightly doughy.

Scoop batter into cupcake liners. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool completely before frosting.

Frosting:
In a large mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese, butter and vanilla together until smooth. Add the sugar one cup at a time. Increase the speed to high and mix until very light and fluffy. If thicker frosting is desired, add more sugar. If frosting is too thick thin with milk.

printable recipe

If you make this don't use real food coloring. You need to buy the Wilton concentrated gel coloring. I get mine at Michael's. The stuff is super concentrated so normally you don't need very much of it- but to get a real blue you need a pretty decent amount. I was worried when I was making the cake because normally I add this coloring one drop at a time. Also I was worried the cake would just turn out brown- or taste funny because of all the food coloring. Nope! Bright blue, moist, "Smurfcakes" arrived out of my oven. I adjusted the frosting recipe to use a little less cream cheese. I like cream cheese frosting but I like buttercream better so I was going for a cross between the two. The cool part of this is that the food coloring didn't dye my entire kitchen blue (because you know I got it everywhere) and easily cleaned up with just some soap and water. Now I want to make velvet cake in every color! I did some research on where velvet cake comes from but there is no clear answer. Some sources say it was invented at a New York hotel in the 40's, other say it comes from the South during the Civil War era. One thing that seemed constant was that a true velvet cake contains both buttermilk, and vinegar.