Fresh Berry Birthday Cake in Honor of My 6th Blogiversary

Today is my blogiversary!  Six years!  Hard to believe I'm still going strong after all this time.  In honor of this occasion, I want to share with you a great birthday cake recipe.

Last year I asked my soon-to-be four-year-old, Lena, what kind of cake she would like for her birthday.  She said strawberry.  I found lots of strawberry cake recipes that called for Jell-O, but when I stumbled across one that used real strawberries, I knew I found the one.  Then this year when I asked her what kind of cake she wanted, she said she wanted a blueberry cake.  Now, for those of you who don't know Lena, her favorite color is blue and she is slightly obsessed with anything blue.  So I asked her if she wanted a cake made with blueberries, or if she wanted a blue cake.  Because I thought a cake made with real blueberries might turn out more purple than blue.  She insisted that she wanted a cake made with blueberries.  All the blueberry cake recipes I found were for coffee cake type cakes and not really like birthday cakes.  So I decided to make the same cake I did last year, but with pureed blueberries instead of strawberries.  They both turned out wonderfully.  I got the recipe from I Made That.  I had to adapt it to fit my 9" cake pans instead of 8".

Fresh Berry Birthday Cake with Berry Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

3¾ cup cake flour

1½ tsp baking soda

¾ tsp salt

½ cup buttermilk

6 tbsp canola oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

6 oz. butter, room temperature

2¼ cups sugar

3 large eggs, room temperature, beaten

1½ cups pureed fresh berries

1½ tsp lemon zest

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°. Coat three 9” cake pans with baking spray. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.  In another medium bowl, combine the buttermilk, oil, and vanilla  Set aside.

Beat the butter and sugar until it forms a paste. Add the eggs in a slow stream, beating well after each addition. Beat for 1 minute at medium speed. Gradually add the buttermilk mixture and beat for 1 minute at medium speed.  Reduce the speed to low and add the flour mixture. Mix until just combined. Stir in the pureed berries and the lemon zest.

Spoon into the prepared cake pans and bake until the cakes spring back when touched lightly in the center. Cool before removing from the pan.  Cool completely before frosting.

Berry Cream Cheese Frosting:

16 oz. cream cheese, room temperature

6 oz. butter

1 cup powdered sugar

6 tbsp seedless berry jam

1 tsp vanilla extract

¼ tsp salt

In a medium bowl, beat the butter and cream cheese until smooth.  Sift in the powdered sugar, and beat until incorporated. Add the berry jam, vanilla, and salt, and beat well to incorporate.

Makes one three-layer 9” cake.

The berry cream cheese frosting is amazing.  You can make it with any variety of fruit jam, just don't use jelly.

 The cake itself did turn out more blue than I was expecting, but the frosting was kind of purple.  If using blueberries, make sure you puree them right before incorporating them as they oxidize and turn brown like bananas and apples.   I never knew that before making this recipe.

Blueberry cake batter.

Strawberry cake batter.

 Lena, the birthday girl, helping me make this year's blueberry cake.

Little sis, Eva, got to help too, of course.

Makes a very pretty cake.

I made letters out of white chocolate for the top of the cake.  I'll show you how to do that in a separate post.

And candles make it complete.

Got them all!

 This is the strawberry cake I made last year.  I didn't make the berry cream cheese frosting; just a regular cream cheese frosting (big mistake!).  The party was "My Little Pony" themed.

The strawberry cake doesn't come out quite as pink as the blueberry one comes out blue, but it was delicious.

 This year, Lena got her very own camera.  One of the first things she photographed?  Yep, her piece of cake.  I wonder where she learned to take pictures of food? ;)

 This cake is so good!  I didn't eat much of the blueberry one because I don't really like blueberries, but the blueberry fans that tried it loved it.  My preference would be raspberry, but I think the seeds would cause a problem.  

Thank you all so much for reading my little blog these past 6 years!