March Madness is in full frenzy here in the Bluegrass. The Cats won the SEC title yesterday in an awesome game that went into over time, Coach Cal’s face has been put on bottles of Maker’s Mark bourbon and everybody’s doing the John Wall dance. All is right with the world, at least as far as University of KY fans are concerned.
So you can understand why I just had to make these Blue Velvet cupcakes when I saw the recipe on Sprinkle Bakes. The cake is a blue version of Red Velvet cake and it tastes wonderful topped with cream cheese frosting.
I used the recipe from Sprinkle Bakes with her suggestion for using food coloring gel. I only made one small change, which was to add a bit of water to the paste of cocoa powder and gel. The water made it much easier to combine the two ingredients.
Blue Velvet Cupcakes aka KY Wildcat Cupcakes
Ingredients
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 sticks butter softened
- 2 eggs
- 1 Tbs. cocoa powder
- 1 Tbs. Wilton food coloring gel in Royal Blue
- Wilton food coloring gel in Violet – stick a toothpick in the bottle and use that amount
- a teaspoon or two of water
- 2 1/2 cups cake flour
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 cup buttermilk
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 1/2 tsp. baking soda
- 1 Tbs. vinegar
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Put cupcake liners in the cupcake pans.
- In a mixer bowl, cream the butter and sugar.
- Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well.
- In a small bowl, mix the cocoa, food coloring gel and water together to form a paste.
- Add to the ingredients in the mixer bowl and blend well.
- Stir the flour and salt together and add to the wet ingredients, alternating with the buttermilk. Mix well.
- Blend in the vanilla. I
- n a small bowl, combine the baking soda and vinegar and then add that to the other ingredients in the mixer.
- Fill the cupcake liners with batter, about 2/3 of the way full. The batter will be thick.
- Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely before frosting.
- 2 pkgs cream cheese, softened (16 oz)
- 2 sticks butter, softened
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 4 cups powdered sugar, sifted
- In a mixer bowl, beat the butter, cream cheese and vanilla until smooth.
- Add in the powdered sugar gradually, until the consistency is spreadable.
My friend, Claire used the cake recipe to make a basketball cake using a Wilton pan and it turned out cute. I’m sure you could use the recipe for a layer cake as well.
Red velvet cupcakes with the cream cheese icing would be good for a cream and crimson theme. Too bad the Hoosiers are sitting at home 🙁 Oh well there’s always next year.
Here those would be Duke Blue Devil blue!
Love it!
PS — Joan — those are fightin’ words! 🙂
Beautiful! I’d like to add a link to this post in my Blue Velvet post. Would that be okay?
Oh, my boys would be in heaven! Blue is their signature color…
how cool are those! so creative….
Woo Hoo going to make these for my boyfriend. He was there.. Got to hug Ashley Judd too. He will have a fit over these. They will be a staple tailgating food.
Go Big Blue!!!
🙂 If you look at my name you will know why I almost choked reading this ..Congrats on the win!
Go Dawgs!!!
Marian
Marian, that was such a good game and Mississippi played so well. I was so sad they didn’t make the tournament. Where’s the justice in that? They really deserve to be in it.
I’m baking orange-chocolate brownies as I type this… in honor of the Syracuse Orange *Ü*
Your cupcakes look delish.
Kentucky looked good tonight! Hope they make it to Indy! I’m going to have to make these, too, only in September in Indianapolis Colts blue! 🙂
I have a March Madness giveaway going in my blog. Stop by and enter if you get a chance 🙂
Let’s GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Mountaineers!
Ha! That promises to be a really good game, doesn’t it? I’m looking forward to watching! Of course, KY is going to win 🙂
Hi! Those cupcakes look so good! Going to make them for my daughter’s “blue” themed birthday. When you say “powdered sugar” is that confectionary sugar or unsweetened powdered sugar? thanks!
Marla, it’s confectionary sugar. Happy birthday to your daughter!
Didn’t know you were a KY fan. GO BIG BLUE! will be making these soon.
What would be a good substitute for buttermilk? Thank you, the cup cake is blueliscious.
Instead of buttermilk, I use a cup of milk with a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice stirred into it.
So it would be 2 Tbsp of vinegar?
In total that is, so instead of a cup of buttermilk I would use a cup of milk with one tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar, then I would still add the tablespoon of vinegar (that would be combined with the baking soda as stated) Thank you.
xine, that’s right. Happy cooking!
First of all, I just want to say that I LOVE your blog!!! I was just skimming through some of your Ingredient Spotlights, and found these UK Wildcat Cupcakes. I had no idea that you are from Kentucky too! We are also HUGE Wildcat fans, and I am sure these will definitely be on the menu for next years Final Four party! Thanks for sharing! GO CATS!!!!
I saw the Red velvet recipe done as Pink Velvet for Valentine’s day and a layer of Red and one of Blue for July4th. I guess you could make any color or combination you wanted – school colors, business colors, your favorite, etc. It’s delicious cake in any color.
Simple Beautiful!
I love it! ^^
Excellent Recipe.
I made Red Velvet for the Blue.
I tried many Red Velvet recipes and this is definitely a keeper!!
Can you tell me how many cupcakes this makes? I would like to make them for my friend’s baby shower next week. Her colors are blue & gray, so these would be perfect with either gray icing or gray sprinkles!
Whoops! I see now where it says it makes 24 cupcakes.
I made these 2 nights ago and they tasted great and looked great.
However they did turn my family’s poo green, all 7 of us. Probably TMI but thoughtbit should be mentioned so someone doesn’t freak out if it happens to them.
Lol! the dangers of eating food coloring 🙂
Instead of cupcakes will this work with just making a cake? If so, how many layers?
Every recipe I have found ends up being cupcakes.
I’ve done it as a 9×13 pan before. It works, but it’s a pretty heavy cake. You could do it as layers too, but like I said, it is denser than most cakes.