New Jersey · Dessert
Blueberry Crumb Cake
- Intermediate
- 75 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a floral thread lifting the aroma, fading in warm spice.
Ingredients
- For the crumb: 250g flour, 165g brown sugar, 1 tbsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp salt, 170g melted butter
- For the cake: 250g flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp soda, 1/2 tsp salt, 115g butter, 200g sugar, 2 eggs, 1 tsp vanilla, 180ml sour cream
- 350g blueberries
The skills inside
Creaming butter & sugarThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Stir the crumb ingredients together until they hold in large clumps; set aside.
- Cream butter and sugar, beat in the eggs and vanilla, then alternate the dry ingredients with the sour cream.
- Fold in the blueberries and spread in a lined 23cm square pan.
- Break the crumb mixture into big pieces over the top: pea-sized crumbs disappear, so keep them chunky.
- Bake at 175C for 50-55 min until a skewer comes clean. Cool, then dust heavily with icing sugar. 55 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Creaming butter & sugar 28 recipes
- The butter started at the right temperature: it took a fingerprint and held its shape, neither greasy and slumping nor hard from the fridge.
- It has visibly paled, from yellow towards near-white, and grown in volume, and getting there took minutes rather than seconds.
- The texture is light and aerated: a spoonful is fluffy and holds a soft peak rather than sitting dense on the spoon.
- Rubbed between finger and thumb it is still faintly gritty with undissolved sugar, and not slick or oily.
- It is one homogeneous cream: not split, slackened, or separating into a greasy mass with liquid running out of it.
Where it goes wrong The butter was too warm, or it was beaten well past its point, so the fat softened and gave up the air it had taken: the mixture goes slack and oily and the cake bakes dense and greasy with a sunken middle.
The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake 135 recipes
- Tested at the true centre and the thickest point, not at the convenient edge: the edge is done long before the answer is.
- The skewer comes out as the recipe describes, clean and dry or carrying the stated moist crumb, and it does the same on a second test in a different spot.
- The wobble is read in motion: nudged, the centre moves as one set mass with a faint tremble, rather than a liquid ripple travelling across the surface.
- The other signs agree with the test: risen and just shrinking from the sides, the top set and dry to a light touch with no wet gloss on it.
- Pressed lightly at the middle it springs back and leaves no lasting dent.
Where it goes wrong It was judged on the clock and on how the edges looked, so a centre still liquid went to the rack and sank as it cooled, a dense wet seam under a perfectly browned top.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Sauternes
- Also Right
- Demi-sec Champagne
- From the Taps
- Belgian tripel
- Zero-Proof
- Jasmine tea
The sweetness rule is absolute: the pour must be sweeter than the plate, and acid keeps it from cloying.
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