My friend Dorothy invited me and Tom to join her family on Saturday for a trip to Butler's Orchard in Germantown, MD, to pick blueberries. I have never been blueberry picking before, and I have to say, I'm a huge fan. It's effortless, and there are no thorns or hard manual labor involved. Plus, we were able to pick the fattest, juiciest, sweetest blueberries I have ever seen for only $2.29 a pound. Our visit fortuitously coincided with the beginning of sour cherry season, so Tom and I also picked a few pounds of cherries (but this was a lot more physical effort, and cherry-picking is pretty frustrating for a vertically challenged person like me). A few hours and $28 later, I had a mild sunburn and 12 pounds of fruit, mostly blueberries. I plan to eat a lot of these blueberries straight or in my regular breakfast of yogurt mixed with blueberries and Grape Nuts. But I knew that I was going to have to start baking to use up all of these luscious lovlies while they are still fresh and at peak flavor.
For my first project, I decided to try Fruit Financiers from Perfect Cakes by Nick Malgieri. It's a quick batter made with ground almonds, flour, sugar, lemon zest, softened butter, rum, vanilla, and egg whites. The batter is parceled out into small tart pans, and then topped with fruit and sliced almonds before baking.
These little cakes are beautiful. They had a light almond flavor that wasn't too sweet, and the blueberries were just delicious. However, I was a little disappointed with the texture. The cakes were very soft throughout -- about the consistency of a muffin -- with only the sliced almonds on top adding any textural interest. I was hoping that the golden brown tops would have a firmer crust. (It's actually quite possible that they did have this nice crust when they were fresh; I left them out overnight to cool and there's no telling what adverse effects the D.C. humidity had on the texture.) But it was an easy recipe with a very attractive result. I will probably try making these again some time when I can serve them fresh out of the oven, maybe with a side of whipped cream.
Recipe: "Fruit Financiers" from Perfect Cakes by Nick Malgieri.
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