Thursday, February 24, 2011

It's Only Thursday Blueberry Poundcake

It's Thursday, it feels like it should be Friday, and my daughter comes home from preschool in the mood to "cook something."  She is my daughter.

I took out my copy of A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg, which is my favorite memoir/recipe book ever, and knowing that we had a big carton of fresh blueberries took out her Blueberry-Raspberry Pound Cake recipe.  We only used blueberries, which we tossed the berries in confectioners sugar instead of flour, and creme de cassis instead of kirsch, but it was a fun afternoon with my youngest child, tossing around flour and butter and eventually getting a cake in the oven that smelled fabulous, and tasted even better tonight after dinner.


The recipe calls for a bundt pan, which I have used many times to make my Mother-In-Law's recipe for Triple Chocolate Bundt Cake.  It's a family favorite.  My daughter, Julia, immediately started recalling the last ten times we ate the chocolate cake.  I kept reminding her, between fishing around for the egg shell she had thrown in, that we weren't making chocolate cake this time, but instead a very good pound cake with blueberries.  When we put it in the oven and I turned on the oven light for her to take a peek she took a big inhalation of cake fumes and exclaimed, "I can't wait to see it turn into chocolate!"

Needless to say, at dessert tonight, no one even mentioned the Triple Chocolate Bundt Cake.

Ingredients:2 cups plus 8 Tbsp. cake flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
5 large eggs
1 2/3 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups (10 ounces) unsalted butter, diced, at room temperature
2 Tbsp. kirsch
1 cup blueberries, rinsed and dried well
1 cup raspberries, rinsed and dried well


1. Set an oven rack to the middle position, and preheat the oven to 300 degrees F.
2. Butter a standard-sized 9-cup bundt pan and dust it with flour, shaking out any excess. (If your pan in nonstick, you can get away with a simple coating of cooking spray, no flour needed.)
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together 2 cups plus 6 tablespoons flour, the baking powder and salt.
4. In the bowl of a food processor, blend eggs and sugar until thick and pale yellow, about 1 minute. Add butter and kirsch, and blend until the mixture is fluffy, about 1 minute, stopping once to scrape down the sides of the bowl. If the mixture looks curdled, don’t worry. Add dry ingredients and process just to combine. Do not over mix. The batter should be thick and very smooth.
5. In a large bowl, toss berries with the remaining 2 tablespoons of flour. Pour batter into the prepared pan, spreading it evenly across the top. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the cake’s center comes out clean, 1 to 1 1/4 hours.
6. Transfer cake to a rack, and cool in the pan for 5 minutes. Carefully invert the cake out of the pan onto the rack, and cool for at least 20 minutes before slicing. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature.

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