Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Tuesdays with Dorie: Blueberry Crumb Cake

"Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" - the White Rabbit - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
My posting is late again, oops!

This week's selection was Blueberry Crumb Cake, chosen by Sihan of Befuddlement. In my baking life I've never made a crumb cake, which seems silly since I'm always baking. I guess it never really called to me? At any rate I waited until the late minute (ie Monday night) to make the cake so I was in kind of a hurry. I used the blueberries, although Dorie says you can use almost any fruit/berry. I'd like to try it with raspberries and peaches. My favorite part was making the 'crumb' part, which was just butter, sugar and walnuts (my memory is fuzzy so there might have been something else too). The cake part was pretty simple, dry ingredients, buttermilk, sugar + butter and then eggs. The only noticeable difference from most cakes I make is the rubbing the lemon zest into the sugar, which we also did last week. Lemon-scented sugar smells so good, I think you can do the same thing with vanilla bean and I might try that soon too.
The cake batter was really thick and a little difficult to even out in the pan but I managed. Before you put it in the oven you take the crumb topping, break it up into pieces and lighting press it into the top of the cake.My cake baked for about 55 minutes, it also rose a lot, especially in the middle. So much so that the topping spilled down the side of the pan. I had to put an aluminum foil tent on the top of the cake during the last 10 minutes of baking because the top was already pretty brown. Doug and I each had a piece while it was still warm and we both liked it. It would have been better with coffee but it was going on 11:00PM and it probably wouldn't have been a good idea to brew a pot then. The rest of the cake I wrapped up and took to my knitting group last night. I haven't gotten their reviews yet but I assume they liked it. Thank you Sihan for your selection!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your cake looks great! I'm glad you liked it. I agree, it would have been wonderful with coffee but not at 11 pm. :)

Engineer Baker said...

Beautiful! I bet your knitting group loved it - it looks perfect.

TeaLady said...

Whats not to like - butter, nuts, blueberries!!!

Yours looks good.