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The Batter Thickens

A food blog balancing sweet treats & healthy eats.

Percy Jackson’s Blue Cake

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I am interrupting your regularly-scheduled Christmas baking posts to bake some cake to celebrate the release of Percy Jackson season 2!! I made these blue chocolate chip cookies for season 1, and I explained in that post how the whole blue food thing is from the books. It’s an inside joke between him and his mom that he likes blue foods, because his stepdad didn’t think blue foods existed. Also because he’s the son of Poseidon. In the books he loves blue chocolate chip cookies, blue pancakes, and eats blue birthday cake.

I tried making blue pancakes, and… well, they were blue on the inside. But they browned on the outside, and ended up looking kind of weird and gross. Delicious, but… not going on the blog.

So I retooled. In two of the books, Percy gets blue birthday cake. In the fourth book, it’s just refered to as “blue birthday cake.” And then in the fifth book, he gets birthday cupcake after he turns 16 and fulfills the prophecy. That’s described as a “chocolate brick with extra blue cement” because it’s made by his cyclops brother.

I know this sounds bizarre if you haven’t read the books. Point is: a blue cake seemed like the best way to celebrate!

I tried making a “blue velvet” cake, and… it was not as blue as I would have liked. It tasted like red velvet, but I didn’t put in enough dye, and it was a sort of green-gray shade of blue. Which is fine, but… I kind of am doing this “for the ‘gram.” Or, for the photos on the blog. And for the vibes while I eat it. The blue has to be blue! It’s what Percy would have wanted! And I don’t love red velvet flavored things anyways.

So instead, I made some small-batch vanilla cupcakes and dyed them blue. And these are birthday-cake-clear-vanilla flavored, so very fitting to specify that they are birthday cake! I think Percy would enjoy them. Your tongue will likely be very blue after eating them, but that’s sort of the point!

Now, I look forward to turning my mouth blue eating these cupcakes as I watch season 2 of the show. My zillennial heart will be happy.

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Percy Jackson’s Blue Birthday Cupcakes

  • Author: Audrey
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Ingredients

Cupcakes

  • 1 egg
  • 1/3 cup granulated sugar
  • 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
  • 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt, a small pinch
  • 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 1/4 cup milk
  • 1/2 teaspoon clear vanilla extract (regular is fine too)
  • 1 ounce blue food coloring

Frosting and Decoration

  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
  • 2 cups powdered sugar, a little more or less to taste
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt, a small pinch
  • 1/2 teaspoon clear vanilla extract
  • 1–2 tablespoons milk or cream
  • As many blue sprinkles as you can get your hands on

Instructions

Vanilla Cupcakes

  1. Preheat the oven to 350F degrees. Line the 6 middle cavities of a regular-sized muffin tin with muffin papers.
  2. In a medium bowl using a hand-held electric mixer, beat the egg and sugar for about 5 minutes or until the mixture is very pale in color and has significantly increased in volume.
  3. Sprinkle the flour, baking powder and salt over the eggs and gently whisk in the dry ingredients.
  4. Add the butter and milk to a liquid measuring cup. Microwave in 30-second increments until the butter is melted. Whisk in the vanilla extract.
  5. Whisk the warm milk and butter mixture into the batter until smooth. Add in the blue food coloring to your desired shade, and mix until it’s a consistent color.
  6. Spoon the batter into the cupcake liners filling each about 2/3 to 3/4 full. You should end up with 6 cupcakes.
  7. Bake in the preheated oven for 18-20 minutes or until the tops look set and are slightly firm/springy to the touch, or an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
  8. Cool the cupcakes for 10 minutes in the pan, then remove from the pan and continue cooling on a cooling rack.

Frosting

  1. In a small bowl, beat the butter until smooth.
  2. Add in the salt and vanilla extract. Starting with the mixer on low speed, beat in 1 cup powdered sugar.
  3. Mix in the rest of the powdered sugar about 1/2 cup at a time, alternating with a tablespoon of milk or cream until the desired sweetness and thickness is reached.
  4. Fill a bowl with blue sprinkles, and then pipe frosting onto the top of each cupcakes, just in a sort of blob way. Then, dip the frosted cupcake into the sprinkles and roll around to cover the tops and shape them.

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