How to make a Blue Velvet Cake
Transcript
00:00 Hi, I'm Rebecca Brand and today we're making Blue Velvet Cake.
00:13 It is an amazing recipe and it's incredibly elegant.
00:17 The ingredients for this dish are flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, butter, sugar, eggs,
00:25 vanilla extract, milk, blue food coloring, and the frosting is made with butter, cream
00:32 cheese, powdered sugar, vanilla extract, and just a little milk for thinning.
00:38 First we combine our dry ingredients, which is 3 cups of flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder,
00:45 1 tablespoon cocoa powder.
00:47 I hate sifting, so I'm going to use a whisk and I'm going to aerate that flour.
00:52 That's what sifting does.
00:53 I'm putting my dry ingredients aside and I'm going to do my wet ingredients.
00:58 And that is 1/2 cup of butter, which is the same as 1 stick.
01:01 Now that is soft.
01:02 It's at room temperature.
01:04 I'm going to add 1 3/4 cup granulated sugar and that's your basic white ground sugar.
01:12 I put 4 eggs in this recipe.
01:14 Let's combine this.
01:17 Add your 1 cup of milk and put that vanilla extract in there.
01:23 I'm using 2 teaspoons.
01:24 Now while you're mixing it, add your flour mixture a little bit at a time.
01:33 There is a real issue when you're making cakes.
01:36 You do not want to over blend it.
01:38 If you over blend that cake, it's going to be tough.
01:42 You want it light and fluffy but velvety creamy.
01:45 Now take a look at that color.
01:46 That is a chocolatey cake.
01:48 We added that tablespoon of cocoa powder in there but here comes magic.
01:54 This is going to be blue velvet, as beautiful as the crown jewels.
01:59 We're going to add in our blue food coloring.
02:05 Now I want it really luscious blue so I add a little more because at first that color
02:11 is green.
02:12 I don't want green.
02:13 I want blue.
02:14 Now I'm happy with that blue.
02:19 Okay make sure you have your cake pans prepared.
02:21 I'm using an 8 inch round cake pan.
02:24 9 inch are fine too.
02:26 I throw a little bit of corn oil in it.
02:28 Any oil you got is fine, even butter.
02:30 I just take a paper towel, wad it up and I move that grease around.
02:34 There we go.
02:35 Then I throw a little flour in it and you swirl it around the pan.
02:41 This takes only 10 seconds.
02:43 Don't bother buying that expensive stuff that you spray on in the pan.
02:47 You know I'm happy to do it this way.
02:49 We always have oil and flour in our kitchen.
02:51 Let's put the batter in the pan.
02:53 Now I just use the little paddle in there because it saves me from having to clean something
02:57 else and I just try to estimate 50%.
03:04 Now that is what's important and the reason is you want your cake to cook evenly in the
03:09 oven.
03:10 Then the next thing you do is you want to get it level because you don't want that big
03:14 hump in the middle like a turtle's back.
03:18 So go like that.
03:21 We're good.
03:22 Now we're going to put them into a 350 degree preheated oven.
03:26 Space them out so you have an even distribution of the heat.
03:32 Bake your cake in that 350 degree oven for 20 to 25 minutes and let me tell you why.
03:38 Every oven is different.
03:39 So check it after 20 and if it looks quite undone leave it another 3 to 4 minutes.
03:44 But by no means overcook that cake because if you do it's going to be dry and icky.
03:49 While our cake is cooking let's put together our frosting.
03:52 It takes 8 ounces of softened cream cheese.
03:56 Room temperature is perfect.
03:58 And 1 1/2 sticks of butter.
04:00 That's equal to 3/4 of a cup.
04:02 Let's combine those two together.
04:07 Let's add 1 teaspoon vanilla.
04:10 I'm adding 4 cups of powdered sugar a little bit at a time.
04:14 As that gets really thick I'm going to add 1 teaspoon of milk at a time.
04:20 It's about 1 teaspoon of milk for every cup of powdered sugar.
04:24 Let's put the rest of our powdered sugar in now.
04:30 My frosting recipes always are a little bit bigger than normal because I never like to
04:34 run out of frosting on a cake.
04:38 It is all combined and that's a beautiful consistency for our frosting.
04:44 Here's the big surprise with that blue velvet cake.
04:47 You always wonder how they get those beautiful colored sugars at your grocery store and they
04:51 cost so much money.
04:53 Let me show you how it's done.
04:55 Here is plain granulated sugar.
04:58 And here is that blue food coloring.
05:01 To that granulated sugar you just throw a few drops of your beautiful blue food coloring.
05:06 Isn't that magic?
05:10 I love this trick.
05:15 It's a trick for all ages I think.
05:17 Look at that great blue sugar you made to top your cake.
05:21 How fun was that?
05:29 Okay put that toothpick in and it came out clean.
05:33 That has been 25 minutes.
05:35 We have to let our cakes thoroughly cool before we frost them because if we don't that creamy
05:41 base to our frosting is going to make a big mess.
05:44 It's going to run all over our cakes.
05:47 It's been an hour and a half and the cake has cooled down so we need to take it out
05:51 of those pans.
05:53 So I take a knife and I go around the cake.
05:57 Now this is how we get the cake to stack up properly.
06:00 It plunks when it's ready.
06:03 Next we center it with whatever we're going to be displaying our cake on.
06:09 Okay we did it.
06:14 So let's frost our first layer with that great frosting.
06:20 That cream cheese and that butter and that frosting is the perfect cream cheese frosting
06:25 so save that recipe for lots of cakes.
06:29 So I put a whole bunch on the top and around we go.
06:37 Time for the second layer.
06:40 Here goes my knife around the edges.
06:43 My trick.
06:46 Plop.
06:49 So with your hand put it on the bottom of that cake.
06:55 And up we go.
06:58 Center your top layer right on top of your frosting.
07:00 So what I do is I put it on top first just a little bit so now let's do our sides.
07:09 Now it's time to decorate our blue velvet cake.
07:11 I'm just making sure my sugar isn't sticking together.
07:14 And we're going to make a cute little design.
07:16 So watch this.
07:17 I just pinch that sugar and I'm going to go around that cake in a circle just following
07:24 the outline.
07:25 This is a fun art project.
07:29 Oh man let's see what's inside.
07:34 This is going to be my best bite of today.
07:42 This is velvet.
07:43 Blue velvet.
07:44 Fit for royalty.
07:45 Subscribe to my channel and bon appetit.
07:49 [music]