Berries in the winter are an act of resilience. They’re a burst of hope for warmer days. I wanted to make this seemingly summer cake on a zero degree day because my heart needed a reminder that seasons don’t last forever. Seasons are just that -- seasons. Something good is always around the corner. I love the way cooking can be an act of resilience. Resistance against melancholy, despair, and even the cold.
Choosing what to cook directs our mindsets and spirits. To make a decadent meal in the middle of grief says, “Against all odds, I can still find pleasure.” Even better, cooking for someone else in the middle of grief says, “I will find it within myself to be a blessing.” In the past year, I have known much grief. Cooking has helped me climb my way through it.
Food is a physical, incarnational way to express love and concern for other people. It’s the realest way I know how. Real in the sense that the people you love can see, smell, taste, and be nourished by your food. Cooking is embodied love.
This blackberry cake was shared with people I love: Madeline, Sam, Kailey, J, my in-law parents, and Gina who sits at our apartment lobby’s front desk four days a week. (All at different times of course, because you know, pandemic). Sharing this cake was the best part of this cake.
As far as baking went, the assembly was rather quick and could all be done by hand. My favorite part was manually crushing 2 pints of blackberries, releasing the juices from their little pods and smelling their sweet fragrance. The blackberries are incorporated at two different steps. Half of them get folded into the batter, and the other half are poured on top of the batter once it’s in the cake pan. This ensures a rather even distribution of berries in this otherwise subtly sweet cake.
I think my cake turned out drier than it’s supposed to be, primarily because I called another audible and swapped regular all-purpose flour for GF all-purpose flour in a 1:1 ratio. I was a little disappointed. I’ve swapped in GF flour in two different recipes now, and both have wound up drier than expected. Upon hearing about this difficulty, my baking-expert pal, Margaret, did some quick research and sent me this illuminating article from King Arthur about how to sub in GF ingredients without losing moisture and volume. The article suggests that beyond a flour substitute, a GF recipe will need Xanthum gum and additional eggs for wetness. I’m looking forward to giving this method a try in my next Alison dessert.
Lastly, I was very pleased by my choice of cake condiment. Yes, cakes can have condiments, too! Alison suggests butter and honey, which I’m sure tastes nice. But what I wanted more was lemon curd! I had leftover egg yolks from another recipe I was working on and didn’t want them to go to waste. So I whipped up a half recipe of lemon curd, and boy oh boy, did it elevate the cake experience. Not only in terms of flavor, but also moisture - the curd made up for the cake’s dryness.
22 recipes cooked, 203 to go.
Dropping off cake to Kailey. A highlight of my week!
Cake is an excellent accompaniment to folding laundry.
