Simmer Stock - Kitchen scripts: Blueberry Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Blueberry Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Halle's two (or she will be later this week). She likes blueberries. Scratch that, revise: She LOVES blueberries. Her favorite breakfast is blueberry muffins with cream cheese (to eat - lick off cream cheese, pick out blueberries putting 25% on clothes, smush cake on plate). Fittingly, this is the birthday cake daddy made when Mormor, her aunt Anni and her cousins came up on Saturday. It's really just a big blueberry muffin - and thus a little more dense than some would like for a cake. But it's moist, tasty, and really really good with the cream cheese frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients:

2 8 oz. packages cream cheese @ room temperature
1 1/4 sticks (10 tbsp) unsalted butter @ room temperature
2 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons sour cream

Put cream cheese and butter in a bowl and beat with an electric mixer at medium speed until combined and fluffy(I strongly recommend a standing mixer, but a handheld will do fine). Add sugar and sour cream and beat at low speed until combined (feel free to beat at medium speed if you don't mind being covered with powdered sugar before. I've done it before - and it's definitely an experience to remember).

Blueberry Cake

Ingredients:

3 cups sifted cake flour (measure after sifting) 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 12 oz. (3 sticks) unsalted butter @ room temperature 2 cups sugar 5 large eggs 1 teaspoons pure vanilla extract 1 cup buttermilk 1 lb frozen blueberries (seriously - if you want to use fresh, freeze them first - they mix with the batter without turning it all blue that way)

Prep

Preheat oven to 350°.
Prepare two 9" cake pans (rub butter all around, dump in some flour and turn the pan to coat, then dump out the extra flour)
Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt.

Cream the butter

Ok, here you really should use a stand mixer with the paddle blade, but you can get away with a handheld mixer. First, beat butter and sugar on medium speed until pale, light, and fluffy (about 5 minutes).

With the mixer running, add eggs one at a time, pausing between eggs until the previous one has been well combined with the butter and sugar.

Add the vanilla extract and beat until incorporated.

Add the flour and liquid

With mixer on low speed, add 1 cup of the flour mixture, mix until combined and add 1/2 cup buttermilk, mix until combined. Continue to alternate adding flour mixture and buttermilk (do the math - you end with the flour), until you have a smooth batter.

Don't forget the berries

Add the blueberries and fold the batter by hand (no, no, no, don't put your hand in the batter - use a spoon or something) just to disperse the berries. Pour the batter into the prepared cake pans, flattening the tops with a spatula.

Bake

Bake until a wood toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean, 40 to 50 minutes. Transfer pans to a wire rack to cool.

Frost

Put one cake on a plate or cake stand and spread about 1/3 of the frosting on top. Place the other cake on top of that and just slobber frosting all over the darn thing.