TWD: Blueberry Crumb Cake

I made the blueberry crumb cake while I was in Houston for spring break. I knew that I'd be doing this and I was just thrilled because it meant that there would be many extra mouths to help me eat this. I wouldn't have to worry about cutting it in half or modifying the recipe, I could just go for it. There was just one problem: getting the recipe home with me. When I went home for the holidays I brought BFMHTY with me. But, I have quite a few irons in the fire right now and I knew that I'd be bringing quite a few books home with me to *work* over the break (seriously, I could have saved myself the trouble of lugging them around, I got almost nothing done over the break) and BFMHTY is an awesome, amazing cookbook but it's large . . . and heavy. So, for awhile I thought I'd bring the book to class with me one day and make a copy of it while I was at school . . . but the thought of lugging it just 12 blocks made my shoulders sore just thinking about it. So, I wrote it out. This brought me back to my days of having to write up pre-labs before the labs. You know, I never understood why I had to do that -- it didn't bother me but I never understood -- but now I do. If you've read a few of my past posts (Chocolate Armagnac Cake in particular but not exclusively) then you know that I have a tendency to skim the directions. And sometimes I miss an important step . . . or a couple of important steps. So, while I was copying down this recipe I told myself that this was for the best, it would make me pay attention to the directions. I'm not sure that writing out the recipe is 100% why I didn't make any little mistakes with the crumb cake but I know that it didn't hurt. That said, I don't think I'll be doing it every week.

I used orange zest just because I was ready for a little break from lemons (I did some other lemon baking while I was home) and I used a combination of blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries because I had my heart set on this being a berry crumb cake rather than a blueberry crumb cake. I had pondered using frozen mixed berries but it turns out that they don't sell frozen berries without strawberries. Dorie says that strawberries are pretty much the one berry that really won't do well in this cake so I wanted to heed her advice and stay away from them. That said, I certainly wasn't going to pick through the frozen berries to stay away from the strawberries so fresh berries it is!

I was a little bit confused by the crumb topping. I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be turned into a pie dough, brickish thing because Dorie says that you break it up to crumble it over the top. Or, was it supposed to be streusel-esque? I still don't know but this is what I ended up with:

Flour-coated berries don't sink to the bottom of your batter.

Ready to go into the oven:

Et viola! The finished crumb cake. My crumb topping sort of baked together but it was crumbly when cut.

The verdict: I liked this cake quite a bit. It's not too sweet but it's very moist and the crumb topping makes it buttery and rich. Walnuts in or on baked goods are really not "my thing" so I sort of wish that I'd used pecans instead or actually left them out. This cake smells absolutely fantastic while it's cooking. I thought that the true test of how great it smells would be these pictures I took of Duke, the family dog who used to be a complete spazz but he's mellowed slightly at the ripe old age of 10.

He loves to help in the kitchen but he's not the most dedicated sous chef. Here he is at the beginning:

Poor Duke got tired so he had to lay down in the dining room to watch me. But gosh, it sure smells good and here's Pavlov's dog with a GIANT strand of drool (ewww!) because it smells so good. (Not to worry, I cleaned that up right after I took that picture!) So, if you have a burning desire to test out Pavlov's theory, this is a good recipe to use.

Thanks to Shihan of Befuddlement for choosing the Blueberry Crumb Cake this week!