In preparation for the Easter weekend I have been looking for a nice dessert to serve on Sunday for lunch. My first attempt was this lovely blueberry pie recipe from the blog Kitchenspace. Ana's has a cookie crumb crust and looks absolutely divine. I can imagine the wonderful crunchiness of the base against the blueberries. Unfortunatelly I used some short crust pastry I had ready made. It had to be used as soon as possible so I chose to use it as the base for my pie. The filling is gorgeous but I have decided that I will not use an ordinary shortcrust pastry as base. It doesn 't do the pie justice. One thing I absolutely adore about this recipe is how simple and quickly it is to make. Don't be fooled though as the result is delicious. If you want the recipe just visit the blog via the link above and have a look. You will not be disappointed. It is a great contender for my Sunday lunch.
The second attempt was this recipe by Julie Le Clerc, the New Zealander food writer and cook. It is a mini Madeira cake soaked in blueberry syrup. The original recipe asked for raspberries but I decided to try with blueberries instead. The cake has a nice citrus taste. I have reduced the lime juice amount required for the syrup as I thought that it was a wee bit too much. As much as I like this recipe I am not too sure about whether I will bake it again. The cake becomes quite moist due to the syrup which is a bit runny and it might be a bit awkward to serve it. Apart from a big glass of water I am not too sure what the best drink to have with it would be. If coffee was chosen it had to be unsweetened as the cake is pretty sweet in my opinion. I am posting the recipe here in case you want to have a go yourself. Let me know what you think of it.
For the baby madeira cakes:
125g butter
1 cup icing sugar
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
4 egg yolks ( small egg)
¾ cornflour
1 tsp baking powder
½ cup milk
Pre-heat the oven to 160oC and flour 12 individual cake or muffin tins or one 20 cm spring-form cake tin.
Cream together butter, icing sugar, lemon zest and egg yolks. Stir in sifted dry ingredients and then milk. Spoon into prepared tins and bake for 15-20 min or until skewer inserted comes out clean. Please only fill in half of the tin as the cake rises a bit.
Remove from the tins to cool. Secure non-stick paper collars with string and saturate cakes with blueberry (or raspberry) crush syrup.
Blueberry ( or raspberry crush ) syrup
1 1/2 cups sugar ( I used only 1 cup as I felt that it would be too sweet otherwise)
1/4 cup water ( a bit less)
juice of 2 lemons
300g blueberries ( or raspberries)
Place sugar, water and lemon juice into a saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring until sugar has dissolved.Boil for 2-3 minutes.
Add blueberries (or raspberries) and lightly crush. Boil for another 2-3 minutes. Pour over cakes.
3 comments:
Wow! I love blueberries and both recipes look great Valentina!! And the pie seems nice with the shortbread crust.
I am probably bias, but I would definitely choose the pie over the cake! hehe!
I am not fond of too sweet desserts. By the way, did you think the pie was too sweet??
My husband liked it the way it was, but me and Matheus thought it was a little on the sweet side... next time I make I will try reducing the sugar amount to see how it goes.
Ana
Ana, I think that I will prefer a crunchy base rather than the one I used - a matter of taste really. Perhaps because I used the pie there was a good balance of flavours and I did not find it too sweet. The cake was nice, different, but I didn't feel like making it again.thank you for this great recipe! Loved it.
Love it!
Paz
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