Cheryl Wixson's Kitchen

Diane’s Birthday Cake Lemon Blueberry Cake

March 14, 2010 on 7:07 pm | In Uncategorized | No Comments

So, March is the month of birthdays. At the office, we take turns making a cake for each other, and this year, I got to make a cake for Diane.

Diane is our livestock person…what she doesn’t know about critters she will find out, and I have been fortunate to learn a great deal about humane, organic livestock management…in particular, with my rabbits. More on that later.

Diane is not an extravagant person, and appreciates little luxuries like the lemons my aunt ships from California, which I always share with her. So for her birthday this year, I decided to make a lemon chiffon cake with a blueberry whipped cream frosting. Lots of eggs and jersey cream!

The recipe for the lemon chiffon cake came from the Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum…she calls it a Lemon Glow Chiffon Cake. The recipe calls for 1/2 cup of egg yolks and 1 1/4 cups of egg whites…no problem as the girls at Quill’s End Farm are laying up a storm and I had plenty of eggs. The cake is baked in an angel cake type pan…the kind you invert over a bottle to cool. So, I painstakingly made this lovely cake, baked it, it was gorgeous, and left it on the counter overnight to cool.

The next morning I removed the cake from the pan and trimmed the edges, preparing to transport it to the office where I would frost it and serve at lunch.

Best made plans….when I went to pack up my files for the office, our shepherd was counter serfing. I was only out of the kitchen for a few minutes, but returned to see a black wagging tail and a half gone cake. Disaster! My husband decreed I needed to make a new cake…I wasn’t sure…thoughts of trimming off dog bites and slathering with whipped cream were in my mind.

I did not have any eggs remaining to make a new cake…just the extra yolks from making the Lemon Glow. Plus no sugar…and no butter in the house. The next day was the dairy delivery.

Frantically searching for some sort of a recipe, I settled on Sour Cream Butter Cake, also from the Cake Bible. Except, I substituted maple sugar for the cane sugar, used all my egg yoks, used yogurt instead of sour cream, and a combination of canola oil and butter. Also flavored the cake with lemon juice and lemon zest.

The result was a rather dense, heavy crumb version…but hey, it was a cake. We packed up to head to the office, picking up a pint of heavy cream at Quill’s on the way.

My frosting plan all along a blue-berry whipped cream. Highland Blueberry Farm makes a blueberry bark…a delicous dried blueberry , well, bark. I figured if I chopped it quite finely in the food processor and folded it into the whipped cream it would produce a light, delicate frosting.

Got to the work and put the cream in the bowl of the Kitchen aide mixer, starting to whip the cream, and gathered my other supplies. Somehow, I lost it…and the delicate whipped cream turned to butter. Oh well…it will still taste good. When I folded, well, couldn’t really fold…let’s say stirred in the bleuberry bark…it was a rather gloppy mess. split the cake in layers and filled with blueberries and slathered on the frosting. Birthday cake! A rather sorry sight…but the thought was there.

As my husband said…not my best effort.

Diane enjoyed it…and confided in me that she would have enjoyed the other cake also, regardless of the dog bites!

DIANE’S BIRTHDAY CAKE: LEMON BLUBERRY CAKE

5 large egg yolks
2/3 cup yogurt
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
2 cups sifted cake flour
1 cup maple sugar
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
4 tablespoons soft butter
½ cup canola oil

preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9-inch springform pan.

In the bowl of your electric mixer, cream the butter and maple sugar. Add the egg yolks, canola oil and yogurt, lemon juice and lemon zest, beating well. In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients, then add in batches to the liquids, beating well to aerate and develop the cake’s structure.
Spoon into pan and bake for about 45 minutes until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool on a rack and remove from pan.

1 pint heavy cream
1 – 2 cups Maine wild blueberries
blueberry juice or finely ground blueberry bark

Whip the cream and fold in blueberry juice or bark, adding a bit of sugar if needed. To assemble the cake, split into 3 layers, fill the layers with cream and blueberries. Frost the cake with the remaining blueberry cream and decorate the top with blueberries.

Split the cake into layers and filled each layer with bluberries.