Vegan Month of Food 2015 Day 10: Something Blue

Day 10! Today we're tasked with bringing you blue food. Honestly, if I had my way, I would've dumped a pint of (organic) blueberries in a parfait dish, chilled up some (organic) unsweetened coconut milk, whipped it, then plopped it on top of the berries. Being that this is VeganMoFo, even I think I needed to bring you something a little more inventive.... even someone as minimalistic and simple as me.

I made a blue velvet naked vegan cake. Dog help us all.

The good:

It's vegan. It's a naked cake--quite trendy, even I've learned this in the Keys.

The bad:

Blue food coloring.... and lots of it.

The ugly:

See above comment.

This recipe is not being supplied. I do not want to be associated with this cake. I wouldn't make a cake with coloring like this. The amount of unnatural food coloring in a cake like this is, in my opinion, not healthy, and also impacts the final flavor of the cake. If you are tasked to make a blue velvet cake and you want it REALLY blue like this, take a conventional blue velvet recipe, use about 1/2 ounce vegan color gel (I used Wilton, as of this writing, it's vegan), use your own egg replacer of choice (I used aquafaba, didn't reduce it, simply measured, whisked by hand till somewhat fluffy and firm, and combined), use coconut oil or vegan butter for the butter, and swap out the poison dairy milk with your choice of non-dairy milk (I would suggest soy milk for the best structure and texture, but coconut milk, flax milk and hemp milk would work well I think), and wing it. It will be blue, trust me. So will everything else in your kitchen. Trust me on that as well.

Being that it's a "velvet" cake, I went with vegan cream cheese frosting. I have my own personal recipe, but you can find tons of decent recipes on line for vegan versions, or simply use a conventional recipe and convert to vegan by use of vegan cream cheese (I used Tofutti, non-hydrogenated).

I filled the inside of my cake with blueberries and strawberries.

I trimmed the edges of the cake evenly all the way around to make sure I got the most "bang for the buck" of blue... it's bluer on the inside than where the cake touched the pan.

Naked cakes are something I personally really like the look of. If this wasn't about "blue" I would've handled this cake totally differently and "crumb coated" the entire cake, then pretty much called it a day after some additional minor decorating.

Minimalistic. I like that. Both in food and home.

It took 2 days to rid my kitchen of all the blue dye I found in random places, I sacrificed one professional silicon spatula to the dogs of blue, and in the end I of course gave the cake away.

If you want a blue velvet cake, go with a recipe such as Chocolate Covered Katie's blue velvet made with things like blueberries. No, it won't be electric blue, but then again, you're not writing for MoFo, are you.

Glad to have my kitchen un-blued. See you tomorrow!

xo