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Epicurious

Red Velvet Cake With Blackberry–Cream Cheese Whipped Frosting

4.8

(6)

A threelayer naked cake with clouds of purple and white marbled frosting on each layer and a crown of blackberries on top.
Photo by Jocelyn Delk Adams

Blackberries are one of a kind, quite sweet (the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice), and, as it turns out, the perfect mates for a classic red velvet cake. Red velvet is the quintessential Southern cake flavor. The richness of the buttermilk batter, with its slight whisper of chocolate, is perfectly offset by a creamy, smooth cream cheese frosting. You can’t beat that amazingness—that is, until you swirl the cloud of cream cheese with a violet streak of blackberry compote. The result is not only delicious but also quite dramatic against the white frosting and brick-colored layers. The beauty of this dessert cannot be ignored. In fact, I suggest you bake this cake when you truly want to impress your guests.

Note

I love the earthiness of blackberry seeds in my compote, but if you aren’t a fan or you crave a smoother texture, you can simply press the blackberries through a fine-mesh strainer after mashing them in the compote instructions. The seeds will stay in the strainer for you to discard. The cake layers can be quite tender, so feel free to refrigerate them (20 to 30 minutes should do it) to firm them up and make them easier to work with when frosting.

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