On Tuesday afternoon one of my co-workers asked me for an opinion about a Raspberry Buttermilk Cake recipe from epicurious.com, because she was thinking about making the cake for her husband's upcoming birthday. I read over the recipe and thought that it looked terrific, and actually a lot like something I might make. Then I suddenly remembered that I had an open quart of buttermilk in the refrigerator (from the banana cupcakes I made on Sunday), and I decided that making this cake would be a great way to use up some of it.
I used to live in Arlington, VA, where I could reliably purchase low-fat buttermilk in pints or quarts at the Harris Teeter supermarket across the street from my apartment. Since I moved to D.C., the only place I can find buttermilk (other that non-fat buttermilk, which I tried once for baking with very disappointing results) is Whole Foods, which only sells full-fat buttermilk by the quart. That means every time I buy buttermilk, I always try to bake a series of things using the ingredient so that I can minimize waste from the quart. Buttermilk isn't exactly expensive (if I recall, maybe something like $2.29 for the quart), but still, I hate waste. So I volunteered to my colleague that I would happily try out the recipe for her that evening and bring the results into work the next day so that she could give it a taste and decide if she wanted to make the cake for her husband.
Of course, this meant that I needed to buy some berries. The recipe is written to make a 9-inch round cake, so I decided to make a quadruple batch in two 9- by 13-inch pans so that I could try out the cake with a couple different types of fruit. (No doubt I was also motivated to make so much cake by the fact that a quadruple batch would consume an entire pint of buttermilk.) I stopped by Whole Foods after work and picked up a pint of bluberries and a pint of raspberries, to the tune of $9. It only took a few minutes to mix up the cake batter, and I topped one cake with the raspberries and the other with blueberries.
This cake bakes at a fairly high temperature of 400 degrees, so the tops were deep golden brown at the end of the baking time. The bottom crust and edges of the cake were also quite dark. All of the fruit, which had been scattered on top before baking, sank completely to the bottom. The cake was wonderfully fragrant and had an exceptionally light, tender, and moist crumb. The sugar topping was delightfully crunchy, and gave the top crust a beautiful sparkly sheen. I thought that the raspberry cake was definitely the better of the two, both because the tartness of the fruit was perfectly balanced againt the flavor of the cake and the sweet sugar topping, and also because the texture of the raspberry seeds made it more interesting. I thought the blueberry version tasted a lot like a run of the mill blueberry coffeecake and was nothing particularly special.
This cake is somewhat rustic in character and would be amazing with some ice cream or whipped cream. I'm very happy to have discovered this recipe to add to my collection... And I'm also pleased to have achieved the laudable goal of preventing a dollar's worth of buttermilk from going to waste by adding $10 of other ingredients!
Recipe: Raspberry Buttermilk Cake from epicurious.com.
I used to live in Arlington, VA, where I could reliably purchase low-fat buttermilk in pints or quarts at the Harris Teeter supermarket across the street from my apartment. Since I moved to D.C., the only place I can find buttermilk (other that non-fat buttermilk, which I tried once for baking with very disappointing results) is Whole Foods, which only sells full-fat buttermilk by the quart. That means every time I buy buttermilk, I always try to bake a series of things using the ingredient so that I can minimize waste from the quart. Buttermilk isn't exactly expensive (if I recall, maybe something like $2.29 for the quart), but still, I hate waste. So I volunteered to my colleague that I would happily try out the recipe for her that evening and bring the results into work the next day so that she could give it a taste and decide if she wanted to make the cake for her husband.
Of course, this meant that I needed to buy some berries. The recipe is written to make a 9-inch round cake, so I decided to make a quadruple batch in two 9- by 13-inch pans so that I could try out the cake with a couple different types of fruit. (No doubt I was also motivated to make so much cake by the fact that a quadruple batch would consume an entire pint of buttermilk.) I stopped by Whole Foods after work and picked up a pint of bluberries and a pint of raspberries, to the tune of $9. It only took a few minutes to mix up the cake batter, and I topped one cake with the raspberries and the other with blueberries.
This cake bakes at a fairly high temperature of 400 degrees, so the tops were deep golden brown at the end of the baking time. The bottom crust and edges of the cake were also quite dark. All of the fruit, which had been scattered on top before baking, sank completely to the bottom. The cake was wonderfully fragrant and had an exceptionally light, tender, and moist crumb. The sugar topping was delightfully crunchy, and gave the top crust a beautiful sparkly sheen. I thought that the raspberry cake was definitely the better of the two, both because the tartness of the fruit was perfectly balanced againt the flavor of the cake and the sweet sugar topping, and also because the texture of the raspberry seeds made it more interesting. I thought the blueberry version tasted a lot like a run of the mill blueberry coffeecake and was nothing particularly special. This cake is somewhat rustic in character and would be amazing with some ice cream or whipped cream. I'm very happy to have discovered this recipe to add to my collection... And I'm also pleased to have achieved the laudable goal of preventing a dollar's worth of buttermilk from going to waste by adding $10 of other ingredients!
Recipe: Raspberry Buttermilk Cake from epicurious.com.
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