I am sorry that your cake turned out poorly. Sometimes our actual oven temperatures are too hot (especially when recipes dont state if it is convection or fan to be used), and an overbaked cake could be the reason for dryness.
Maybe it is the universe's sign to save you and your guests from toxic food dyes. The International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health published a paper in 2012 which raised health concerns about all synthetic food dyes on the market. In 2021, the journal of Advanced Nutrition published a paper citing similar toxicity concerns about blue synthetic dyes.
However, natural blue pigment has a lot of health benefits, especially for the heart and nervous system. When I want blue cake, I make two white sponge cakes, place blueberry jam to sandwich them together, and on top I place a cream cheese frosting tinted with strained blueberry jam. I agree it's not "blue" - more purple - but dreamily beautiful nonetheless, and goes down a treat.
Although I've never tried using blueberry pulp to colour cake dough, it sounds like a delicious experiment to get a "true" blueberry velvet cake. If someone tries this, let us know what happens please.
Pretti, to be clear, the word "velvet" is only a remarkable marketing tool. If we remove marketing hype and label it honestly, it should be called something like dye cake - but I guess that would sell fewer cakes. And if I and other "velvet cake haters" in another thread on this Forum and medical journals had our way, I guess we'd call it "toxic dye cake". Then no such cakes would be sold
