Blue Velvet Cake

Having gone to college in the South, and been in a sorority where red velvet cake was the traditional celebratory dessert, I know my red velvet cake. So I was very excited to see a variation on the theme: Blue Velvet Cupcakes*.

I made the recipe as specified, with a few variations: I didn't want to run to the store just to buy buttermilk, so I researched substitutes for buttermilk*. Lo and behold, other people agree that buttermilk is a practically useless commodity. Although it was not listed in the link above, I used a cup of plain yogurt pre-mixed with a tablespoon of vinegar. The idea is that vinegar supplies the tangyness that is so distinguishable in buttermilk recipes. The cake recipe does call for another tablespoon of vinegar at the tail end of mixing. The end result had no traces of vinegar flavor (thank goodness).

I didn't have the specific brand of food coloring, so I just used my McCormick coloring. The little bottle of blue was plenty, plus a good squirt of red (so it doesn't come out grey, although the batter will look slightly grey with a hint of purple before baked.) Also, I discovered my muffin tin had gone missing when I moved recently, so I made a cake instead of cupcakes. No great loss there. Baking time was extended by 10-20 minutes.

The cake wasn't very pretty before it was frosted, probably because the natural browning of the crust and the blue food coloring made it look green-brown. But a good cook knows that a quality frosting can fix almost any cake:


Ta-da!
The cake received rave reviews by discriminated palates at the weekly ladies' night.



After the fact, I find it amusing that my love for velvet cake began in a red state, and now I've moved home to a blue state. My cake color has changed accordingly.