Let them eat Drupal Cake

Cake with Drupal logo in blueberries

Last week Cyberwoven hosted the local SC DUG. To encourage people to come when we hold these events in Columbia I’ve blatantly started to bribe people with baked goods: I give the presenter a choice of Cookies, Cake, or Pie – everyone picks cookies (unless I swap in Brownies instead of cookies then they pick brownies), no one asks for pie or cake. This month Will gave a talk about Docker and asked for cake! Since I was excited to finally have someone actually ask for something interesting I decided to do something Drupal themed:  I made Drupal Cake.

Turns out if you go Googling for Drupal cake you get ideas for how to make a yellow or white cake and decorate it with a Drupal logo. There are some notable counter examples, but I wanted something with more Drupal baked in.

So I made a Chocolate Blue Velvet Cake with a Drupal logo in blueberries.

This recipe is derived from All Cake’s Considered’s Dark-Chocolate Red Velvet Cake (if you’re an NPR-nerd you should buy a copy but it is also available in its entirety from the Internet Archive – I assume legally).

Of course hers is red, and I wanted blue. But since my actual inspiration came from people providing recipes (mostly bad ones) for baby shower cakes getting suggestions about how much food coloring to use wasn’t hard. So a little marriage of ideas and you have Chocolate Blue Velvet Drupal Cake.

Ingredients

Cake:

  • 2 Sticks of unsalted butter at room temperature
  • 1 ¼ cups sugar
  • 1 ¼ cups brown sugar
  • 6 large eggs at room temperature
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • ½ teaspoon baking soda
  • ¼ cup Dutch process cocoa
  • ½ teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 1 ounce Blue icing coloring (my version used food coloring but didn’t have quite the color I wanted.  Icing coloring is usually stronger so this should get you closer).

Icing:

  • ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature
  • 2 8-ounce packages cream cheese at room temperature
  • 32-ounces of confectioners’ (powdered) sugar.
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 package of fresh Blueberries

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 325°F
  2. Cream the butter and then gradually add the sugars beating well as you go.
  3. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each.
  4. Add the vanilla extract and beat for another couple of minutes.
  5. In a separate bowl combine and lightly mix the dry ingredients.
  6. Alternate adding roughly ⅓ of the dry mixture followed by ⅓ of the sour cream, beating well after each addition, until all of both are fully incorporated.
  7. Add the coloring, and continue to beat well.  After a minute stop the mixer and using a spatula to get any unevenly dyed batter off the sides and bottom, and then beat until the color is even.
  8. Pour the batter into a pair of well greased 8 or 9-inch round cake pans, and place them in the oven so they have as similar of conditions as possible.
  9. Bake for 45 minutes or until the cake tests done.
  10. Cool the layers in their pans for 10 minutes and then remove from their pans carefully.  Let them cool to room temperature.

Frosting:

  1. Cream the butter and the cream cheese at medium speed.
  2. Gradually add the confectioners sugar.  Continue beating until the it is light and fluffy.

To Assemble the Cake:

  1. Wait until the cake is fully cooled to room temperature. You need one to be flat (to form the bottom layer) so if domes formed on both cakes, use a long knife to cut the top of one layer to be flat (you can do both if you want the top flat, but drops are round).
  2. Place about a ⅓ of the icing in a separate bowl, and working from this smaller amount (we’ll get back to the rest later – this is just to avoid getting crumbs in your icing) put a smooth later cross the top of the bottom layer.
  3. Place the top layer on the bottom layer, and ice the top of the cake, and then the sides. This first coat should be fairly thin.  Give it a few minutes to dry on the surface before proceeding with the second coat.
  4. Using the rest of the icing, apply a thick final coat of icing, particularly on top.
  5. Using the blueberries attempt to create a Drupal logo pattern on the top of the cake.
Top view of the cake.
I didn’t get a picture of the inside so here’s another view of the logo – yes that’s supposed to be the Drupal 8 logo. Happy 1st birthday to Drupal 8.

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