I extend this cake to you as my formal apology for not blogging the past two weeks. I consider it a “half-homemade” cake which makes the apology all the more genuine. The recipe comes from none other than Betty Crocker.
It was actually quite simple and the cake was so incredibly moist that I may not ever bake a cake that isn’t velvet again. Since I followed the recipe precisely I am simply here to provide you with tips on this one. I have to admit that in its beginning stages my cake was such a train wreck that I stopped photographing it. So my first tip is: do not ever give up on your recipes. You can see below just how unappealing the batter was.
I used 9.5″ rounds and baked each for 23 minutes. When I stacked the cakes I did so completely and utterly wrong. I was running low on icing so I dotted the bottom cake with icing as opposed to covering the entire surface as I should have. I don’t have a piping kit yet and for some reason I had lost every ounce of common sense by that point so I took an old tip and held it on the outside of a plastic bag and made a small decorative belt of icing. You’ll notice that it is only a belt because I didn’t have the patience to do the entire border. As I sit here and watch Kid’s Baking Championship, I realize I should have put the tip inside the bag and made the entire cake look stunning. So, don’t get frantic and forget your common sense.
Before I finished decorating, my neighbor, Abigail (who is eight and more honest than ever) stumbled upon the unfinished product and her immediate reaction was, “Ew, what is that?” As much as I wanted to give up and settle for the cupcakes I had just baked, I continued decorating hoping that by some miracle I could fix this cake. So, I made my next mistake and decorated the outer ring on the top before putting down a flat layer of icing. After I completed the top ring, I slapped some icing on as gracefully as I could and suddenly the cake didn’t look quite as repulsive. With hope in heart and blackberries in hand, I added them to the top and the cake quickly became appealing.
Finally, I decided to fix the careless mistake I made earlier and I simply covered the intersection point of the cakes with a border of icing and the final product turned out to be better than I could have ever hoped and I had successfully made a blue velvet cake for my wonderful sisters’ 22nd birthday. After seeing the finished product Abigail insisted that I make her birthday cake and also informed me that one day when she opened her own restaurant I would be allowed to work there. That was all the approval I needed.
Sweet Sustenance 