RED velvet, WHITE & BLUEberry :)

Happy Independence Day, everyone!  I was so excited when I got these little cuties in the mail the other day:

I ordered these here:   http://www.jbprince.com/table-service/clear-push-up-large.asp

So I decided that these would be PERFECT for the 4th of July - I could use blueberries, strawberries, white icing, etc.  Then I had someone request Red Velvet cupcakes for an event later this month, so I decided to try out a recipe and make RED velvet, WHITE & BLUEberry cake push-ups!!!

First I needed to butter and flour my pans.  A trick I've learned is for chocolate cake, you can use butter and cocoa powder so you don't have that white dust on your cake when it's done.

Next, I whisked the flour, salt and unsweetened, dutch-processed cocoa powder.  (You might guess that no, I did not use the good stuff to flour my pans - that was regular Hershey's.)

This recipe called for all whisking, all the time - first the eggs and sugar:

And then the vanilla and food coloring:

I was so in love with the color of this batter!  (1/2 tsp of gel food coloring)

I made really thin layers of cake in 4 pans, had enough batter leftover for 6 cupcakes, too!

While the cakes were baking, I took a minute to laugh at my collection of supplies.

This is not even half of all of my stuff.  I need a bigger kitchen!

I used a circle cutter to cut out circles for the cake push-ups, and cut out some mini-stars too.  (Notice the butter coming to room temperature in the background - time for frosting!)

I did take any frosting pictures but I made a basic cream cheese frosting, since most people like that on their red velvet cakes. I've actually never had red velvet cake before!  How about that?  Here are some shots of the finished product:

 And cupcakes, too:

 Guess what I did with all of the cake batter scraps?  That's right - I made cake balls!  I crumbled all of the leftover cake scraps and mixed it with a little bit of the cream cheese frosting.  I then rolled about 22 balls and stuck them into a freezer safe gallon baggie - will make some yummy cake pops soon!