Courtzilla Cooks: Blueberry Buttermilk Cake

Ho. Ho boy. When I came home today I had no intentions of making this. I was going to make meatballs. And mashed potatoes. And asparagus.

Then I looked in the fridge.... and realized I had about a quart of blueberries that weren't going to make it much longer. What to make what to make....

THIS.

- Photo and original recipe are from Smitten Kitchen, Deb is a genius people.

This is so much more than just a cake people. It's transcendent. Light, fluffy, and wonderfully blueberry-ey. And this time, I took pictures. Look I'm learning!

List of ingredients:
- 1 cup flour
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 stick (1/4 cup) softened butter (I used unsalted)
- 2/3 cup sugar, plus a bit more to sprinkle over the top later
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- 1 egg
- about 1 cup of blueberries or whatever other berry you want to put in there.
- 1/2 cup buttermilk... who keeps buttermilk you ask? No one. So first I'll show you how to make it.

Ok... a ton of my favorite recipes have buttermilk in them, but I clearly don't make with buttermilk on a daily basis. That's why this little trick is handy.

For buttermilk, you'll need:

No, I'm serious. That's it. A good rule of thumb is that for every cup of milk, add 1 tbsp of vinegar, then let it sit for 10 minutes. Stir, and voila! Buttermilk. Note the wine glass in the background. Pure class.

On to cake!

- Start by pre-heating your oven to 400 degrees, unless your oven is like mine and loves to burn things. In my case, I lowered it to 325 degrees.

- Butter and flour a 9" circular cake pan. Or use one of those fancy flour in a can thingers. But I can't be bothered with fancy things like that.

Just butter it.... then drop like a tablespoon of flour in the pan, and tap it around over the sink so it spreads all over, and looks like this:

Once that's done, we'll need these characters.

Whisk your flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium sized bowl. Set this dry mixture to the side.

Next, we'll need these ingredients. Low fat butter is for wusses.

You'll want to beat the butter and sugar until it turns a light yellow, and gets pretty fluffy. It's at this point where I wish I had an electric mixer. Alas, this was probably the best work out my arm has gotten in about a month.

Once that's done, add an egg and the vanilla. It should look like this when you're done.

Ok, so here's where it gets a little tricky...ok so not really. Basically you want to dump in about 1/3 the flour, mix it together, dump in 1/2 the buttermilk, mix, flour, mix, buttermilk, mix, end of the flour, mix until just combined. Make sense? 1/3 the flour each time, 1/2 the buttermilk in between when you mix in the flour. Why do we do this? I have no idea.

Plop it into your pan, and scatter the blueberries all over the place. Sprinkle the top with sugar.

Yipes, it started to look like Courtzilla had taken over again. Sad part - this is me trying to be neat.

Back to the cake.

Yummo.

Bake for 20 - 25 minutes. This is what it looked like after about 10 minutes in my burn-happy oven.

But Courtney, you ask, how will I know it's done? AH HA! Another trick.

Take a knife and stick it in the middle of your cake. If you pull it out, and it comes away clean, the cake is good to go.

If you pull it out, and it looks like this...

Back in the oven. This is what it looked like when I pulled it out, about another 8 minutes later.

YUM. But.... it's missing something. Something to throw it over the top in true Courtzilla fashion. Cream cheese glaze? Yes please. And it couldn't be easier.

Characters:

Blatant self promotion. Check out that SWEET Sconnie pen.

Mix together 3 tbsp of cream cheese and 3 tbsp of milk. Make sure the cream cheese is softened, or else you'll get weird lumps in the glaze. Then, add 1 cup of powdered sugar and mix. Should be about this consistancy when you pull your fork away.