Blueberry Cake

A blueberry cake, as I understand it, ought to be more about blueberries with cake than cake with blueberries. My understanding of what a blueberry cake ought to be is based on a cake baked by Mrs. Rubashkin, the mother of the little girl who was my very dearest friend when I was eight years old. I remember the initial shock that anything could be so delicious followed at once by waves and waves of bewildering pleasure as every bite seemed even more mouth-filling, more melting, more surprising than the last. The blueberries, I recall, were held together by the barest matrix of buttery batter. This cake, or the memory of this cake, is the ideal towards which every blueberry cake (and really every cake) that I bake is striving. While I can’t claim to have reached blueberry Nirvana quite yet, I have been having great good fortune with this recipe, for a traditional blueberry pound cake.

Blueberry Cake

About 1 ½ pints blueberries

1 cup (8 ounces) butter

1 generously rounded cup (8 ounces) light brown sugar, or regular sugar

4 extra large eggs

2 cups (8 ounces) flour

Heat the oven to 350F. Prepare one ten-inch cake pan, or two six-inch pans, or one six-inch pan and some muffin cups with butter and flour. I line the pans with baking parchment as well. Wash and pick over the berries. Cream the butter and sugar by hand or in a mixer on the lowest speed. Add the eggs, and then the flour. You do not need any leavening or vanilla, but you can make a softer if less traditional cake by adding up to one teaspoon baking powder and I will permit up to one teaspoon vanilla, but only if you get the good stuff. Mix most of the blueberries into the batter, and scrape the batter into the prepared pans. Sprinkle additional blueberries on top. Bake about 20 minutes for the six inch cakes, longer for the larger cake, less for the muffins or cupcakes. Invite over some neighborhood children and transform their lives forever.