Cold weather and blueberry cake

 

This week here in Kansas City has been very cold.  Actually, it's been very very cold!  But it's going to get even worse over the next few days.  That means staying inside and reading, watching movies, and cooking.  While the high temperatures will be in the single digits over the next few days and the low temperatures will be below zero, I will be safely ensconced in my kitchen making good food.

Today I've already made blueberry cinnamon snack cake.  Every time I make this, my mind is taken back to the practice runs I did with this cake when I was first developing it.  The first few times I made it, I loved the flavor, but there were two problems.

First, the cake was challenging to bake because to bake it entirely through sometimes meant cooking it too long and what was supposed to be a very moist cake turned out to be too firm on the crust and too dry in the outer layers.  If it wasn't cooked long enough then there was the risk of a thin horizontal layer through the middle of the cake that was still not cooked enough, a thin layer of batter that hadn't quite turned into cake.  This would have been mitigated if I had chosen to make small cakes, but I wanted a full 9-inch cake and I was determined to make that happen.  The solution in the end was simple.  The blueberries had to be completely warmed up.  They had to sit out at room temperature first and then be microwaved a short time to warm them up even more.  Once I had that figured out, then the issue was resolved.

Second, I didn't want the cake to be blue.  The problem here is that once you microwave the blueberries they often start to release their juices.  So I experimented with various things and finally came up with the solution.  After microwaving, I rinse the blueberries in warm water, not cold, and then let them dry on a paper towel to soak up the water as well as any juices still releasing from the berries.  Now they could be mixed into the batter without turning everything blue.

These are rather simple solutions, but the details in them proved challenging to define:  how warm to make the blueberries, how to dry them without squishing them, whether to use large blueberries or small wild blueberries, etc.  I experimented with this recipe for a couple weeks tweaking and tweaking the process until I got it just right and I could duplicate it every time to my satisfaction.  And I took lots of notes on all the attempts and what worked and what didn't, trying to detail the protocol precisely.  I ate a lot of blueberry cinnamon snack cake and so did the wildlife that visits my yard.  

I am glad I went to all that effort.  It is one of my favorite things to make and pass out to people.  And today I will be eating many slices throughout the day.  It is sweet but also relatively healthy as cakes go.  Have a great weekend everyone.  Stay inside and stay warm!