{TWD} Blueberry Brown Sugar Plain Cake

Perhaps the best part of summer is the return of fresh berries (optimally, local) at affordable prices. I love eating them by the bowlful and handful, but I try to save some for baking also. The bakers of Tuesdays With Dorie got a chance to bake with berries this week; the assigned recipe is Dorie Greenspan's Blueberry Brown Sugar Plain Cake.

It's tempting to doctor this cake up a bit, adding a streusel topping or a glaze, but that would defeat the whole purpose of it being a "plain" cake. I mean, it's right there in the title! It's a quick and easy cake, provided that your ingredients are at room temperature, and I wanted to test it the way Dorie intended it to be. Besides, how plain can a cake really be that boasts both blueberries and brown sugar?

n.o.e.'s notes:

- The recipe for this cake is on this post on the blog Everyday Insanity, by Cindy

- The cake is supposed to be baked in a 7x11 pan. I do have that size pyrex baking dish, and it's pretty rare that I get to use it for baked goods, but I like square cakes, so I used my 8x8 metal pan with a removable bottom. A closer fit would probably have been a 9x9 pan, but I wanted a taller cake.

- I think I truthfully can say I made this one "as written" - absolutely the only thing I changed was the spice component, which was optional. Rather than the 1/2 tsp of cinnamon, I added 1 tsp of ground ginger.

- Including a pint of blueberries made for a high ratio of berries/batter. I gave some thought to dredging the blueberries in flour before folding them into the batter so they wouldn't drop to the bottom of the cake as it baked, but instead I succumbed to laziness. I didn't want to use another clean bowl, and I was hopeful that the batter was thick enough to support the berries without sinkage.

- My cake pan is dark and non-stick, so I decreased the temperature to 360 degrees instead of 375. The cake was in the oven for 40 minutes, and I let it cool in the pan for about 10 minutes before removing it from the pan via the removable pan bottom.

- As I learned when I cut into the cake, the berries had indeed sunk to the bottom.

the verdict:

This cake may have "plain" in the title, but that doesn't mean it's boring or bland. Or unpopular. My tasters all loved this one, and piece after piece disappeared from the serving plate. I enjoyed the texture and the flavor from the brown sugar, but I was wishing that my blueberries were not those sweet, cultivated ones. To me, the intense flavor burst from tiny wild blueberries would have been better in this cake. My tasters were unconvinced; they liked the cake just as is.