So the Junior Mad Scientist and the Ginja Ninja had a combination birthday celebration and going-away party. They requested cake, and ice cream. Sounds perfectly normal, right?
This is the Writer’s House. We do a lot of things around here. Normal is rarely one of them. I got a text. “We want a blue cake. And cookie dough icecream.”
Now, my son stumped me earlier this year when he asked for Red Velvet Cake with Lime Frosting. I talked him into accepting chocolate frosting, but this time I wanted to make it happen.
It would be easy enough to color a white cake mix blue with food coloring. But to add some flavor, I added a packet of Koolaid mix – the sort with no sugar – and chose Blue Raspberry Lemonade for that. We also added blue food coloring until the batter was the same shade of blue as Stitch (the Junior Mad Scientist loves Stitch, and blue food).
After discussing adding blueberries, another passion of the JMS, I decided that if I added them to the cake mix, they would not work well. So I planned to make a fresh jam on the stovetop while baking, and then pipe that into them for filling. Topping it all off with a minimal amount of cream cheese frosting, since the Ginja Ninja is not fond of frosting.
So there we went from silly food to more, um, elevated blue cake.
It’s still very, very blue.
The flavor was surprisingly good. The jam filling wasn’t overly sweet, which was deliberate on my part, and it worked nicely. I think I’d rather have them like muffins with no frosting. The First Reader bravely tried a bite, and had one of those full-body shudders. He’s not a fan of lemon or blueberry… LOL!
But the kids really liked them. Enough that we’ll likely do these again. What have I wrought?
Comments
6 responses to “Blue-Blueberry Lemon Cake”
Sigh – I can see that the kids liked it, but I am one with the First Reader. It just looks awful. Reminds me of the days when my brother and sister and I discovered food coloring. Yes – turned the milk blue and the lemonade bright green. And I did butter cookies which my father said looked like some exotic kind of mold and bacteria samples.
LOL! Yes, food coloring is best used in very small amounts. This was certainly something more kid-friendly than my usual fare.
Sorta off topic.
There are several studies that indicate why blue colored food is not a good seller.
One of the possible reasons was that blue food indicated spoilage.
Lots of reds, yellows, greens and whites but few naturally occurring blue foods and most of those with blue are berries.
Then there is one of the most gawd awful flavored ice cream for adults, blue moon. And kids love it.
And even blue berries are more purple, especially after cooking. I’ll be glad when she grows out of this obsession with blue food! But until then I do humor her from time to time.
Another use for the unsweetened blue Kool-Aid is if you want to make a “water” look on your frosting you can sprinkle it on white icing (cream cheese is what I usually make). It takes a few minutes for the color to bloom but it gives a great look. The duckies on the cake were happy.
Oh, that sounds cool! I may have to try that…