Summer Berry Bundt Cake

Do you know what is great about summer? I'm not going to say the sun, because 1) I live in Los Angeles, it's always sunny, and 2) I'm not a sun person. So why do I live in Los Angeles?! I wonder that sometimes too!

No, what I love is cheap berries. Berries, berries everywhere! On sale! All the time!

I can buy so many that I don't feel guilty for not just eating them straight up. Because I do, strangely, have this weird guilt about that when they are so good by themselves. But if you find yourself with an excess of berries that will soon go bad before you can eat them all, please PLEASE make this cake!

It is seriously yum. Double yum, even.

I mean, come on. Look at it!

Summer Berry Bundt Cake
Author: Jen @ Fresh From The…
Servings: 1 bundt cake
Prep time: 00:15

Cook time: 00:55

Total time: 01:10

Printable Recipe

A deliciously moist cake that uses a combination of fresh berries and a glazed topping to make your dreams come true.

Ingredients:

• 2 ½ cups plus 2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 ¾ cups granulated sugar
• zest of 1 lemon (optional)
• 3 large eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup buttermilk
• 3 cups mixed berries
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 Tablespoon unsalted butter, very soft
• Juice from 1 lemon (or 2 Tablespoons milk)

Instructions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350°F. Grease a Bundt pan, either with butter or nonstick spray.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk 2 1/2 cups flour, baking powder and salt together and set aside for now.
3. In your mixer, cream together the butter, sugar and lemon zest (if you're using it, I didn't) until very light and fluffy, about 3 to 5 minutes. On low speed, add each egg one at a time, scraping down the sides of your bowl in between each one. Briefly beat in the vanilla.
4. Add 1/3 flour mixture to the batter, beating until just combined, then 1/2 of the buttermilk, another 1/3 of flour, the rest of the buttermilk, then the rest of the flour. Scrape down the sides whenever necessary, and don't over-mix.
5. In your medium flour mixture bowl, toss the berries with your 2 Tbsp remaining flour, and gently fold them into the batter by hand (with a spatula, duh). It'll be thick, and that's good.
6. Spread the batter, or plop it, in your prepared bundt pan, and smooth out the top. Bake for 55-60 minutes, rotating the cake 180 degrees after 30 so it brown evenly. Your cake will be done when a tester comes out clean.
7. Set the pan on a wire rack to cool for 30 minutes, then invert onto a serving platter to finish cooling. Cool completely! I know you don't want to, but you must.
8. Once cool, whisk together the powdered sugar, butter and lemon juice (or milk!) until smooth and thick. Drizzle over the top of the cake, letting it trickle down the sides. Serve immediately or keep covered for 3-4 days.

Recipe adapted from Smitten Kitchen

In photos:

Flour mixture. Hint: if you use dried buttermilk instead of regular buttermilk, add in 3 Tbsp to your flour mixture at this stage.

Butter and sugar get mixed until fluffy.

After the eggs and vanilla are added in. Sorry for the bad light.

Buttermilk and flour have been added now. Hint: if you use dried buttermilk, you will alternate between your flour mixture and plain old water to get to this stage.

Toss your berries in 2 Tbsp flour. This is so they don't all sink to the bottom of the cake when baking. Hint: You can use any berries you like. I used raspberries, blueberries and strawberries. But you could substitute blackberries or marionberries too!

Fold them into the batter. It's okay if they break up a bit. It's not a beauty contest, right?

Plop and smooth your batter into your bundt pan. Stick it in the oven for 55-60 minutes, making sure to rotate after 30.

It should look about like this when it comes out. Let it cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes.

Plop it out onto your serving plate. Ooh, pretty berry colors!

After it's cooled all the way, whisk up your glaze. Yours should be thicker; I used a bit too much milk in mine, I suspect.

After you've glazed and oohed and aahed, it's time to cut that baby and go to town!

Enjoy!

Raspberry-Blueberry Muffins w/ Streusel Topping

This post is coming a few weeks after the fact for these muffins, but that does not diminish their loveliness in mine own eyes.

Because these muffins? They're kind of great.

You wouldn't necessarily think to combine raspberries and blueberries together in a muffin, since you nearly almost always see just blueberries, but let me tell you something - why not? Why is this not a more common thing? Is it because of growing seasons or something? I really know nothing about growing seasons, so this could be true. Or it could be people just make blueberry all the time because they are boring old fuddy duddies.

But me? I push the envelope! Not really, I just happened to have a lot of both on hand and wanted to do something fun with them together. And then I still had two little plastic boxes of the raspberries go bad on me. Dang it!

But before that, there were muffins...

Raspberry-Blueberry Muffins with Streusel Topping

Ingredients

• FOR THE STREUSEL TOPPING:
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 Tablespoons butter, softened
• 2 Tablespoons granulated sugar
• 2 Tablespoons old-fashioned oats
• FOR THE MUFFINS:
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 Tablespoon ground flax seed (optional)
• 3/4 cup fresh raspberries
• 3/4 cup fresh blueberries

Cooking Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Line a standard 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners OR spray with non-stick spray and go liner-free.
2. To make the topping, in a medium bowl, mix together the topping ingredients until crumbly. Set aside.
3. In a bowl, whisk togteher the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.
4. In a large bowl, beat the eggs with the melted butter. Add the buttermilk and whisk to combine. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir just to combine. Batter will be somewhat lumpy, make sure to not overmix. Gently fold in the blueberries and raspberries so they do not break open, and pour into the prepared muffin tin. Crumble the streusel topping over the muffins and bake until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 20 minutes.
5. Let cool in the tins for about 10 minutes, then remove and cool on wire racks.

Adapted from a recipe by Emeril on foodnetwork.com

In photos:

Crumbly topping! Tip: if you like nuts, you can use chopped walnuts or pecans instead of oatmeal.

The butter and eggs and "buttermilk" all mixed together. Why is the buttermilk in quotes? Because I used powdered, so this is actually butter, eggs and water.

And all of the dry ingredients, which includes the buttermilk powder. You see, you add the powder to the dry ingredients, and use water instead in the wet. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. (As another aside, the original recipe calls for a bunch of lemon zest... I am not a lemon fan, so that was nixed!)

Wet and dry all mixed together. Slightly lumpy, and that's okay.

A berry good time! Oh man, sorry. Bad pun.

I just sprayed my tin with non-stick spray, as I did not have any liners. They plopped out fine, but did make for harder traveling. Also, I put these in the oven for a full minute before I remembered to add the streusel topping! Quell horror!

Oh wow, these bake up quite nicely, don't they?

Can I tell you something? These muffins tasted like I had bought them at a bakery. They were really that good. I was kind of amazed at how professional they looked and tasted. Or wait, no! No, I was not amazed! I was like - oh yes! Duh! I am amazing, and it is to be expected! Ha, sure.

Raspberry Buttermilk Cake

Oh Costco and your huge portions of food. I see a flat of bright red raspberries and I just can't resist. I mean, seriously, how pretty are they?

The answer is: very pretty. Perty even.

Thus, with many a raspberry coming out of my ears, I went searching for some recipes. This buttermilk cake was the first one that I had the other necessary ingredients for, so it won out. There's also this other cream pie one that looks delectable, but I did not have about, oh, 40% of the ingredients, and one trip to a grocery store in a day is enough for me. Seriously, grocery shopping? I kinda hate it.

On to the recipe!

Raspberry Buttermilk Cake
(via Smitten Kitchen)

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup plus 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar, divided
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 large egg
1/2 cup well-shaken buttermilk
1 cup (5 ounces) fresh raspberries

Preheat oven to 400°F with rack in middle. Butter and flour a 9-inch round cake pan.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and set aside. In a larger bowl, beat butter and 2/3 cup sugar with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, then beat in vanilla. Add egg and beat well.

At low speed, mix in flour mixture in three batches, alternating with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour, and mixing until just combined. Spoon batter into cake pan, smoothing top. Scatter raspberries evenly over top and sprinkle with remaining 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar.

Bake until cake is golden and a pick inserted into center comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes, then turn out onto a rack and cool until just warm, 10 to 15 minutes more. Invert onto a plate.

In photos:

Butter and sugar mixed together.

With the vanilla and egg.

And the buttermilk and flour all mixed in.

Oooh pretty raspberries!

With some sugar on top.

Uh oh, all of my raspberries sank to the bottom! The lines are from the wire rack I set it on. Oh well. If you don't want your berries to sink, you can try tossing them in some flour first.

Even though the berries sank, it still tastes great. It's one where you're not sure how much you like it at first, then you find yourself going back for more and more.

Would also taste great with some whipped cream on top, if you're feeling fancy.