If you can’t get enough blueberries and are looking for more ways to use them how about a Blueberry Crumb Cake?
Are you still enjoying blueberry season? I am! I picked another quart at the farm today. The bushes are getting pretty empty so I don’t know how many more weeks we’ll get them in our share. For dinner I tossed some into a salad along with lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, cucumber and chick peas. It was delicious and the little sweet bursts from the blueberries were perfect.
This is the blueberry patch at the farm. The netting keeps the birds out.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, after 8 years of thinking about, baking, decorating and delivering cakes for a living about the last thing I want to bake and eat at home is cake.
But crumb cake is another thing all together. Even though I’m a little sick of cake, I love the combination of a very light and soft cake under a chunky topping of brown sugar and cinnamon crumbs. Let’s face it, it’s all about the crumb topping! Folding fresh blueberries into the batter and layering more berries into the crumb topping takes this treat into another league altogether. This is a cake even I look forward to eating. It’s great for dessert or with a cup of tea, but you could also have it for breakfast or brunch on the weekend.
The crumb topping should look like sand and form a clump when squeezed
Gather the crumb topping into large chunks and set aside while you mix the batter
For this recipe I knew I wanted to use a buttermilk cake for the base layer. Buttermilk is a fantastic baking ingredient. Not only does it add moisture and a nice tangy flavor to a recipe, buttermilk is acidic so it tenderizes the cake crumb. You’ll notice that there is no baking soda in the recipe, only baking powder. Baking soda is on the base side of the pH scale, so it’s used with acidic ingredients to balance the pH of a dough. I purposely did not use baking soda because I wanted to keep the batter slightly acidic. This is one of the softest cakes you’ll ever taste. It absolutely melts in your mouth.
The key to a good crumb layer is to mix softened butter into the dry ingredients until it looks exactly like wet sand. When you grab a handful of the mixture it will clump together. By adding the crumb topping in chunks you’ll get nice big crumbs in each mouthful of cake.
I used fresh blueberries for this cake, but you could certainly use frozen berries. Don’t defrost them first. You should fold them into the batter while they’re still frozen so they don’t break down and turn the entire cake green.
Dot blueberries on top of the batter before adding the crumb topping
Break the large clumps of topping into smaller clumps from pea sized to the size of a marble
Do you have a favorite blueberry dish you’d like to learn how to make or to perfect? Let me know in the comments below. I’d be happy to do the research and testing and then post the resulting recipe.
Eileen Gray
Yields 12 portions
30 minPrep Time
1 hrCook Time
1 hr, 30 Total Time
Save RecipeIngredients
- 1.5 cups cake flour
- 2/3 cups light brown sugar
- pinch of salt
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1 stick (4 oz) softened unsalted butter, cut into 1" pieces
- Zest of 1/2 lemon
- 1 egg plus 1 yolk
- 1/2 cup buttermilk
- 1.5 cups (7 oz) cake flour
- 3/4 cup (6 oz) granulated sugar
- 1.5 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 8 tablespoons (4 oz) butter, softened and cut into 1" pieces
- zest of 1/2 lemon
- 1 pint fresh (or frozen) blueberries
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325°f convection or 350° conventional
- Butter and flour an 8" square cake pan (preferably 3" tall)
- Cut an 8"x16" piece of parchment paper and line the pan in one direction, leaving a short overhand on each side
- Butter and flour the parchment
- Combine the flour, brown sugar, salt, cinnamon and zest
- Mix on low speed with the paddle until completely combined
- With the mixer running, add the butter
- Continue to mix until the topping looks like sand
- Remove from the mixer and transfer to a small bowl by squeezing handfuls to create large clumps
- Set aside while you mix the batter
- Combine the egg, yolk and 1/4 cup of the buttermilk in a small bowl
- Sift together the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, add the zest
- With the mixer running on low speed, add the butter and the remaining 1/4 cup of buttermilk
- Mix until completely combined
- Turn off the mixer and scrape the bowl and paddle
- Mix on medium speed for 2 minutes to lighten the batter
- Scrape the bowl
- Add the egg mixture in two batches, scraping between additions
- By hand, fold about 2/3 of the blueberries gently into the batter
- Spread the batter into the prepared pan
- Sprinkle 1/2 the remaining blueberries over the top of the batter
- Sprinkle 1/2 the crumb topping over the batter, breaking into small pea to marble sized clumps
- Sprinkle the remaining blueberries and then the remaining crumb topping
- Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 40-45 minutes
- Cool at least 30 minutes in the pan
- Use the parchment to carefully lift the cake out of the pan
- Cool completely on a wire rack
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Short Dough
Blueberry Crumb Cake
Blueberry Preserves
Blueberry & Cherry Compote
Rustic Plum Tart
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