Birthday Cake Recipe: Blueberry Cake

Birthday cakes have always been a source of stress for our family. I am very picky about birthday cakes, since I do not like frosting. Most times I ended up with a dessert like apple crisp with some candles stuck in it!

My mom wasn't fond of traditional birthday cakes either, so I devised this birthday cake recipe for her when I was 15. I found a traditional white cake recipe in one of her cookbooks and added her favorite fruit, blueberries. I used canned blueberries because I thought it would be easier than fresh, and then discovered a definite benefit to using canned when it came time to do the frosting.

In a purely selfish move, instead of a traditional sugar frosting, I used the juice from the can of blueberries to tint some Cool Whip. Sometimes I used fresh blueberries as decoration on the top.

This birthday cake recipe has been a favorite for many years!

Side note: Just because my mom liked blueberries, I would imagine any canned berry could be used.

Cake Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups flour

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg, unbeaten

1/2 cup milk

1 can blueberries

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

In a medium mixing bowl, stir together the dry ingredients: flour, salt and baking powder. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar, add the egg and beat thoroughly. Add the flour mixture and milk to the creamed butter and sugar, alternately, until smooth. Stir in the vanilla.

Fold in the berries, but reserve the juice for the frosting.

Bake in a 9 x 13 cake pan at 350̊F for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Frosting Ingredients:

1 small tub Cool Whip

Reserved blueberry juice

Pour blueberry juice in slowly, while stirring the Cool Whip, until Cool Whip is a nice lavender color. Juice will not completely blend; there will be streaks. Don't use too much blueberry juice or it will be too runny.

Put the tinted Cool Whip back in the refrigerator and wait until cake is completely cooled to frost.

Enjoy!