Blueberry Cake with Almond and Cinnamon by Alison Roman

It’s softer than any coffee cake. It’s richer than any fruit crumble. It’s more nuanced than any other fruit cake. It takes the cake, because it is THE cake. This blueberry cake with almond and cinnamon is wonderful. 

Allow me to highlight the aspects of this cake that really set it apart: 

1. Almond flour – The recipe utilizes a mixture of almond flour and regular all-purpose, which lends a nutty depth to the batter. Almond flour also makes the crumb slightly more dense than other breakfast cakes. And for those of you wondering, I did swap the all-purpose flour with gluten-free all-purpose flour. I also added an extra egg and a 1/4th tsp. of Xanthan gum. The conversion worked beautifully. 

2. Cinnamon – When Madeline took her first bite, the next words out of her mouth were, “ooo the spices!” To which I responded, “it’s actually just cinnamon!” But I agreed with her – somehow this tasted like a nice blend of spices. Nutmeg and a dash of allspice, maybe? Perhaps it’s the almond flour that gave it the depth. No matter the cause, the cinnamon really transformed this cake from a straightforward berry cake to one with depth. 

3. Amount of fresh blueberries – Two whole cups! Blueberries bursting in every bite. This helped keep the cake moist. There weren’t any real dry patches, save for a few tiny ones at the very edges of the cake. FYI, I think using frozen blueberries here are a real no-go, unless you’re willing to totally thaw and drain them first. 

4. Sugar on top – To give it a crackly texture on top, Alison instructs you to sprinkle 3 tbsp. of granulated sugar over the cake’s surface before baking. The sugar hardens and forms cracks along the top, giving it a nice textural contrast and a punch of sweet in every bite. 

I loved this cake. I can especially see this coming in handy when I need to contribute to a breakfast or brunch of some kind. It’s a crowdpleaser. But I’m also just as willing to make it for myself on a random Wednesday. I’ll have no problem eating it on my own.

80 recipes cooked, 145 to go.

Crushed Blackberry and Cornmeal Cake by Alison Roman

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.

Cocoa Banana Bread by Alison Roman

I came back from my trip to Cincinnati to find 5 overripe bananas sitting on our kitchen counter. So ripe that they were hours away from needing to die in the trash can. I can’t stand food waste. I’ll force myself to eat leftovers for several days past when I should because I hate throwing food away. So I grabbed my cookbooks, searching for an emergency banana bread recipe, and what do you know, Alison’s Cocoa Banana Bread calls for exactly 5 overripe bananas. 

This chocolate banana bread turned out more like a dense chocolate banana cake, which I was thrilled about. From my first childhood memories, I requested chocolate cake with banana slices and Cool Whip frosting for my birthday every year. The bread tasted like a more sophisticated version of my childhood birthday cakes. However, I’m not sure Alison intended that. 

Past experience tells me that banana bread is dense and moist (I tried to resist that word). This recipe called for ½ cup of cocoa powder, which simultaneously gave this bread a strong, but not overpowering, chocolate flavor AND made the batter more tightly packed and somewhat dry. Perhaps the greater reason it turned out drier than expected is because I used All-Purpose Gluten Free flour instead of regular All-Purpose. My friend Margaret tells me that different flours have various hydration levels, so this could easily have altered the end results. 

All this to say, that while the bread was more like a dense cake, it still tasted delicious. My favorite parts were the raw-sugar crust and the sliced banana on top. I’d never tried baking with a raw sugar crust and was delighted by how easy it is to do. Simply grease the inside of a baking pan, sprinkle raw sugar (Demerara or Turbinado) over every side of the pan, and tap out any excess that doesn’t stick. What results is a crunchy sweet exterior in place of what is normally a boring part of banana bread - the sides. This crust meant every bite had something special to offer. And the banana on top, not only did it look fancy, but the sugars in the banana crystallized while baking and the whole thing became slightly gooey, which gave the bread another textural layer. 

The prep time was rather minimal, though I did need a stand mixer. You can make this without one, but your poor hands will be exhausted by the end. The suggested oven time is 90-100 minutes. I took mine out at 80 minutes, and next time, I’ll try 70 because perhaps that will make it less dry. 

11 recipes cooked, 214 recipes to go.