I think the Blueberry Muffins with Lemon Glaze I made a while back left me with a lingering blueberry craving. I decided to try another blueberry baking project, but I wanted to do something more advanced. A quick search and I found this beautiful Blueberry Cobbler Cake recipe. It looks delicious, but I think the blue cake was what really got me. Blue cake! Oh, and that they were layered with crumbles and blueberry compote. I couldn’t resist giving this one a try!
Blueberry cake layers with vanilla buttercream, blueberry compote, and cobbler crunch filling.
The Ingredients
This recipe had a looong list of ingredients, but I had a few on hand. I had a few things on hand like baking powder, salt, granulated sugar, vanilla extract, cornstarch, powdered sugar, brown sugar, and cinnamon.
I found almost all of the ingredients at my usual grocery store, even the vanilla bean paste. They even had a blueberry BOGO sale going on, so I bought 4 11-ounce containers and ended up using 2 of them for this recipe. The only item I had to order was the blueberry emulsion, but I was able to get it delivered the next day.
The Process
Baking isn’t my strongest point, but I am getting more comfortable with it. I was a little nervous at the start, but the instructions for this recipe were so clear and easy to follow. I quickly forgot my fears, fell into a rhythm, and everything went pretty smoothly.
One thing I noticed when I read over the recipe was some of the components can be made ahead of time. That was ideal for me since standing for long periods is quite painful for me, so I made my cake over a period of 3 days.
Blueberry Cake
Day 1 was the blueberry cakes and compote. I started with the cakes and made the compote while they were baking in the oven. Actually, the cakes have a blueberry puree that is made similarly to the compote. It was like a compote warm-up LOL!
I began by putting the berries into a medium saucepan and heating them until softened. Tip: When blueberries soften, they lose their mottled blueish color and turn dark purple with a slight sheen. Once they softened, I put them into my blender, made the puree, and moved on to step 3.
Making the cakes was pretty much what I was used to. First, mix the dry ingredients together. Next, cream the butter in a stand mixer with a paddle attachment. Then add the wet ingredients, followed by the dry ingredients and blueberry puree. I weighed the larger portions of cake ingredients for accuracy and used measuring spoons for the rest.
The batter was a very light lavender color, so I added some food coloring to darken it up. I really wanted the cake to look like the photos! I used 10 drops of grape, violet, and navy blue to darken it. Once I had the color done, I poured the batter into 3 prepared 8-inch cake pans and popped them into the oven.
When they were done, I let them cool in their cake pans for 10 minutes. After that, I moved them to wire cooling racks to finish cooling. You can see in the photo below that one of the cakes broke, but it didn’t affect the finished cake. I refrigerated the cooled cakes wrapped tightly in plastic wrap until I was ready to finish the rest and assemble everything.
Blueberry Compote
The blueberry compote is used as a filling between the slices of cake, and it was very easy to make. All I had to do was add all the ingredients to a pan and stir. The mixture seemed very dry at first, but the blueberries released a lot of liquid as they burst.
The mixture thickened as it heated, and the entire process took 15 minutes. Once it was done, I let it cool then put it into a sealed container to store in my refrigerator.
Crumble
Like the blueberry compote, the crumble is layered between the cakes. I didn’t make the crumble ahead because I was worried it would become soggy in the refrigerator. Instead, I made it the same day I planned to assemble my cake.
The crumble was almost as easy to make as the blueberry compote. I mixed the ingredients in my stand mixer, spread them onto a parchment-lined sheet pan, and baked them for 15 minutes.
The finished crumble cooled while I made the vanilla buttercream icing. I left it on the pan until I needed it to assemble the cake.
Vanilla Buttercream
Stand mixer to the rescue again! My kitchen scale also came in handy here—must like it did when I made the cakes. I left my butter on the counter to soften for about an hour before I planned to make the buttercream.
When I was ready to bake, I began by creaming the butter and then adding the powdered sugar. Sifting the powdered sugar was a test of endurance! It took about 10-12 minutes to sift all of it, and it killed my hand! Once that was done, I followed the instructions and had a pale cream-colored vanilla buttercream icing.
Assembly
I began assembling the cake by filling a piping bag and cutting off the tip. Then I added a layer to a cake board and placed it onto a rotating cake decorating stand.
Assembly went smoothly, and I made sure to take my time with it. It was a matter of adding some buttercream to the cake and then piping a thick rim of it around the perimeter to hold in the fillings. The fillings were a layer of blueberry compote topped with the crumble—I just spooned them on.
That process repeated with the second layer with the top layer covered in just buttercream. Next was covering the sides of the assembled cake with more buttercream. Tip: I used the rest of the buttercream in the piping bag to fill any gaps in the sides of the cake layers.
The next step was freezing the cake for 10 minutes. My cake board was a huge help for this step! I very, very carefully transferred it in and out of the freezer. And I have to say that freezing it and firming the base layer of icing made finishing it much easier than my past experiences.
I used all of the remaining buttercream to finish icing the cake (there was just enough). I tried and tried using my bench scraper to smooth the surface like the recipe’s photo, but I just couldn’t get it. Instead, I used my offset spatula to make a subtle pattern. A few of the extra blueberries pressed into the frosting added some decoration and finished things up.
Timing
This recipe only lists 1 hour to prep and no time for cooking or cooling. I’m not going to include a time rating for it because of that, but this is how my time was spent:
- Cakes (1 hour 4 minutes)
- 24 minutes to prep the cake
- 30 minutes to bake
- 10 minutes+ to cool
- Blueberry Compote (15 minutes)
- Made while cakes baked
- Crumble (21 minutes)
- 6 minutes to prep
- 15 minutes to bake
- Cooled while I made the buttercream
- Vanilla Buttercream (24 minutes)
- Assembly (49 minutes)
- 15 minutes to assemble
- 10 minutes to freeze
- 18 minutes to finish icing
- 6 minutes to decorate with blueberries
- 2 hours 38 minutes total
