Attempting to Bake with Blueberries

A lovely blueberry, almond and lemon cake

After you have filled an 8L bucket with blueberries, what do you do with them?

The first thing I did when I went home was to grab them by the handful and quickly pick out any stems or leaves before putting the berries in plastic bags and freezing them. It's best not to wash the blueberries before freezing because it with wash away the natural protective coating, causing them to deteriorate faster.

At the bottom of the bucket I found three small spiders we had carried 27km away from their home! I humanely left them on our patio ledge...

Then with a bag of blueberries I had stored in the refrigerator I attempted to make blueberry muffins. 

The recipe was pretty straight forward, but somehow I managed to bungle it and ended up with muffins that tasted good, but were very dense, thankfully not as hard as a rock. 

Unfortunately they were not fluffy at all. I had added baking powder, perhaps not enough milk... 

Another factor is possibly not mixing the butter enough to incorporate more air.

I thought it was strange the recipe had called for mixing the berries in some of the flour mixture, but it turns out this is correct; it's so that the blueberries don't all sink to the bottom.

Today I decided to try another recipe, a blueberry, almond and lemon cake by British chef, restaurateur and food writer Yotam Ottolenghi. I even watched the New York Times video of him making it so that I would not get it wrong this time.

I made sure the butter was room temperature and mixed it with lemon zest, sugar, vanilla extract and three eggs before adding the dry ingredients of flour, almond flour, baking powder and salt. 

The batter came together nicely and added almost all the blueberries before putting the mixture in a loaf pan lined with parchment paper that was covered with butter. 

It was in the oven for 15 minutes, then the rest of the blueberries were added on top (so that they didn't all sink to the bottom) and then it was baking for another 35 minutes.

The end result?

The loaf was very fluffy in the middle, had a wonderful lemony taste, not too sweet, and the edges crisped up a bit thanks to the almond flour. The only fault was putting it in a bigger loaf pan; will put it in a smaller one next time for more height.

I managed to redeem myself!

After taking a bite, my father asks, "Why didn't you make two loaves?"