i'll be your whatever you want
fleurdeleo is having a significant birthday this year (the kind that gets prefaced with "big" and ends in a zero), so yesterday I and her friend C., who was here on a surprise visit, took her to dinner at Centolire. It was lovely.
I also made her a cake. A blueberry lemon cheese crumb cake to be exact. Normally, I would say that that is two too many things going on for one cake, but since they are all awesome things either singly or in any combination, I decided to give it a whirl.
It's a very easy cake to make, though it is somewhat bowl and space intensive, because you build it in layers, so you have to make each layer and then find somewhere to stick the bowl while you work on the next thing. Which is fine if you have a table or a counter, but me, I only have a cutting board set across the sink, so there was some hopeful maneuvering going on (hopeful in the sense that I hoped I didn't knock anything from its precarious perch while I was working).
After I washed the blueberries (blueberries!)
I made the crumb topping:
note to self: while the crumb topping fit perfectly in this bowl, it really wasn't large enough to make the topping in. It's a good thing I have small hands.
Then I made the cake batter:
I used heavy cream instead of milk because I had some I wanted to use up before it went bad.
and then it was time to make the lemon-cream cheese mixture:
possibly next time I'll switch this bowl and the little metal one I made the crumbs in.
Then it was time to put the cake together! I bought a 10" springform pan (really, 9 3/4") because the one I have is only 9" and I wasn't sure there'd be overflow or what, since the recipe required a 10". So now I have two springform pans. Other people turn into crazy cat ladies. Me, I am going to be a crazy baking lady - I will be found crushed under the weight of my mixing bowls and specially sized baking pans.
Ahem.
Anyway.
The cake batter is stiff and it doesn't spread easily on its own, so I did that with a spatula:
then I studded the cake layer with half the blueberries:
and then I covered that with the lemon-cream cheese mixture:
and sprinkled the rest of the blueberries on top of that:
and then I sprinkled the crumb topping over everything, and patted it into place once everything was covered up:
Then I put it in the oven for 60 minutes at 325° since it is a dark metal pan, and waited for glory to arrive. And it was indeed glorious:
It cracked a little on top, and the topping didn't brown as much as I'd have liked, but the edges was good, so I am okay with that.
Here it is out of the pan:
and here's an interior view:
All in all, it was very successful. fleurdeleo said it was 100% successful. So I was pleased. The washing up wasn't even that painful, though as I said, it is a little bowl intensive.
*
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/369913.html.
people have commented there.
I also made her a cake. A blueberry lemon cheese crumb cake to be exact. Normally, I would say that that is two too many things going on for one cake, but since they are all awesome things either singly or in any combination, I decided to give it a whirl.
It's a very easy cake to make, though it is somewhat bowl and space intensive, because you build it in layers, so you have to make each layer and then find somewhere to stick the bowl while you work on the next thing. Which is fine if you have a table or a counter, but me, I only have a cutting board set across the sink, so there was some hopeful maneuvering going on (hopeful in the sense that I hoped I didn't knock anything from its precarious perch while I was working).
After I washed the blueberries (blueberries!)
I made the crumb topping:
note to self: while the crumb topping fit perfectly in this bowl, it really wasn't large enough to make the topping in. It's a good thing I have small hands.
Then I made the cake batter:
I used heavy cream instead of milk because I had some I wanted to use up before it went bad.
and then it was time to make the lemon-cream cheese mixture:
possibly next time I'll switch this bowl and the little metal one I made the crumbs in.
Then it was time to put the cake together! I bought a 10" springform pan (really, 9 3/4") because the one I have is only 9" and I wasn't sure there'd be overflow or what, since the recipe required a 10". So now I have two springform pans. Other people turn into crazy cat ladies. Me, I am going to be a crazy baking lady - I will be found crushed under the weight of my mixing bowls and specially sized baking pans.
Ahem.
Anyway.
The cake batter is stiff and it doesn't spread easily on its own, so I did that with a spatula:
then I studded the cake layer with half the blueberries:
and then I covered that with the lemon-cream cheese mixture:
and sprinkled the rest of the blueberries on top of that:
and then I sprinkled the crumb topping over everything, and patted it into place once everything was covered up:
Then I put it in the oven for 60 minutes at 325° since it is a dark metal pan, and waited for glory to arrive. And it was indeed glorious:
It cracked a little on top, and the topping didn't brown as much as I'd have liked, but the edges was good, so I am okay with that.
Here it is out of the pan:
and here's an interior view:
All in all, it was very successful. fleurdeleo said it was 100% successful. So I was pleased. The washing up wasn't even that painful, though as I said, it is a little bowl intensive.
*
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/369913.html.
people have commented there.