Yes! The colour is natural!

Happy birthday to meee! Happy birthday to meeee!! No! You don’t get to know how old I am, but you get to know what I did to celebrate and also the amazing recipe for this cake. One of the best I have ever baked, for real.

The problem was: too many people! I got to eat only one (ok 2…) teeny tiny little slice! Don’t fuckin get me wrong: I was happy so many people came, and sad that some couldn’t… BUT! THE CAKE!!

Ok let me take a step back: to celebrate I went 4 days in Portugal, Porto in particular. And it was amazing! I got good weather, and the city is beautiful, the prices are so low! And don’t even get me started on the Port Wine.

Aaah… the wine! If you like Port Wine, you cannot even waste one fuckin second, GO THERE RIGHT NOW! You will get to sit on the riverside, try different glasses of Port from 10 am in the morning without being a drunkard, eat awesome snacks and better food.

Also, Portuguese men are beautiful. And I met a lot of crazy and interesting people. Thanks everybody, best birthday EVER!! But then I had to come home, sadly, and I decided to bake a spring-ish cake to celebrate with friends too.

To me, spring-ish means lemon+blueberry, or mojito flavoured, or pina colada flavoured. Also, I considered a lime cheesecake. But it was my birthday and I wanted a cake I could decorate! As you can see from the pictured, that didn’t go as expected! Don’t get me wrong, I love how it turned out, very purple and very modern. But I had something completely different in mind.

Picture a tall light purple cake with dark blueberry sauce on top dripping on the sides, fresh blueberries on top of it all with maybe some green or white from mint or whipped cream. Totally different! Three things happened.  1 – the blueberries were HUGE so I ended up using more for the cake itself, I was afraid there would be too few if I just went by the weight. 2 – I used the kind of blueberries that are white inside, so I thought the sauce would become pink, instead it took this AWESOME Port Wine color 😀 You got it: no food colouring!! 3 – I went to buy more blueberries for the decorations and there were none. So I bought lemon cookies, because there is also lemon in the dough.

In the end, I was left with a spectacular, light, lemony, blueberrish and refreshing beautiful cake that I could eat every day of my life. And I probably will! I was afraid it would be a little dry on the inside because even tho the layers are thin, the frosting is very dense. But it was perfect! ❤

Blueberry Cake tastes Amazing

• Servings: 12 slices, not big... I would make 8 out of it!
• Time: 5 hours, less if you use a big oven, I had to bake in three batches
• Difficulty: I'd say easy for a cake, no weird creams or meringues...
• Print

While cooking…

Listen to: Deep Purple – Hush

Drink: PORT WINE! Ruby for this cake, even tho I prefer tawny. Get me another glass right now!

Ingredients – cake:

• 1 cup butter (230 grams)
• 1 + 1/4 cup sugar (250 grams)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar (100 grams)
• 4 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 cup self-rising flour (345 grams)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup buttermilk (240 ml)
• 3 lemons (zest and juice)
• 1 + 1/2 cup blueberries (fresh)

Ingredients – blueberry frosting:

• 1 cup blueberries (fresh)
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 tbs sugar
• 1 tbs cornstarch
• 1 cup butter
• 2 tbs whipping cream
• 2 + 1/4 cup powdered sugar
• Toppings – choose your faves: fresh blueberries, crumbled lemon cookies, berry sauce, whipped cream, lemon zest, …

Preparation – cake:

1. Preheat your oven to 350° F (180° C)
2. Cream the butter until softer, 2 to 3 minutes, then add both sugars and whip the mixture for 5 minutes
3. Add all the 4 eggs and the vanilla extract and continue to mix until well combined
4. Add flour, salt, buttermilk, lemon juice and lemon zest and keep mixing until is, again, well combined. You may feel it’s getting too thick when you first add the flour and the last ingredients, but soon it will get nice and smooth!
5. Now, you can roll the blueberries into flour before folding them in, but they are so smooth the flour doesn’t stick… also, the cakes are so thin it doesn’t matter much if they fall to the bottom, actually 😀
6. You will have to bake 3 cakes. So you can add the blueberries now and divide the batter into the pans, or divide the batter into 3 bowls and then add 1/3 of blueberries each, then fill the pans. You choose. To divide the batter equally I used a scoop, very useful tool indeed!
7. Butter and flour 3 cake pans (of the same size, lol) and fill them, tap them to distribute the batter evenly. As I said, the cakes are very thin so you have to make sure the batter gets spread nicely 🙂 You know, when the pans are floured you cannot mix and stir the batter much AFTER it’s in, so be careful when you pour it – I used the scoop again, to be sure I got blueberries everywhere
8. Bake them at 350° F (180° C) for 27-30 minutes. When they are ready they are still VERY light in color, so check them frequently. They will look undercooked but try them with a toothpick and if it comes out clean they are ready. These cakes are thin so if you bake them to the stage where they are golden on top they will get too dry
9. Notes: I had two pans and a really small oven, so I had to bake them one at a time, it was very time consuming but… aw well! The result was delicious anyway!

Preparation – frosting:

1. Crush the blueberries with a fork – it’s VERY satisfying, think of your enemies now! Think of G.R.R. Martin!
2. In a nonstick saucepan mix blueberries, water, sugar and cornstarch and bring to a boil
3. Boil it for 15 minutes stirring almost constantly, be amazed by the color of it!!
4. If you want a smooth (both in color and texture) frosting, you have to pass it through a strainer now until it’s hot. I didn’t, because I really liked the speckled colour it had! Also you can’t really feel the skin under your teeth, if that’s your concern 🙂
5. Let it cool for at least 30 minutes
6. Cream the butter, then add the cream and the blueberry sauce and whip the mixture for 5-10 minutes
7. Add the powdered sugar gradually, whipping. If you want a thinner consistency stop at 2 cups 🙂

Assembling:

1. Before assembling the cake, make sure everything has cooled down, this is very important. My top layer was still warm (I had to bake them one at a time, remember?), so I had to stop and put it in the fridge 15 minutes before ruining it
2. The cakes should come off perfectly from the pans and have a very even top, so no need to trim anything! YAY!!
3. Divide the frosting into 4, then layer cake -> 1/4 of frosting and smooth it out with a spatula. Repeat 3 times and use the last 1/4 of frosting for the sides
4. Top with anything you like 🙂 I used crumbled lemon cookies and a berry-flavoured ice-cream topping. My first choice would have been fresh blueberries and some whipped cream, tho!

Now for the final touches:

• Calories: cake is 4287, frosting is 2969.
• Fridge: it will keep 2-3 days, but it will never get to that!!
• Freezable: maybe..? The frosting is for sure
• Next day: even better because the flavours mix. I actually baked it the day before ❤
• Cold: Good!
• Hot: not possible, frosting melts
• Re-heating: nope
• Made by: Eli
• Cake recipe adapted from Sally’s Baking Addiction, frosting recipe adapted from Beth Cakes