Lemon cake with blackberry sauce

This recipe is my interpretation of a lemon cake with blueberry sauce found on epicurious.

I chose it because it was a low-equipment cake recipe. I don't have a lot of equipment, having moved several times in the past few years. I have no mixer and I don't have cake strips, so a simple cake is all I can manage (and happily, all I need) for now. Still, lemon desserts are my absolute favorite, and I love cake though I'm not a big fan of frosting.

Most of the flavor in this cake comes from the icing glaze, which is understandable - I've never met a lemon cake that didn't have to be soaked in lemon syrup to be lemony. I have blackberries on hand because it's that time of year, and I do love to use what I've got. Plus, the mustiness of ripe blackberries is beautiful alongside the tart lemon.

It's a lovely casual cake - it doesn't get fancy, but not every cake needs to be fancy.

Lemon Blackberry Cornmeal Cake:

Glaze:

• 1 1/2 cups (packed) powdered sugar, sifted
• 2 tablespoons (or more) fresh lemon Juice

Cake:

• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/3 cup cornmeal
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup milk plus 1 tablespoon lemon juice, let stand a few minutes
  
• 2 large eggs
• 1 TB finely grated lemon peel
• 3/4 tsp vanilla (I used limoncello, because I had it on hand).
  
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted, cooled

Make the glaze. Add enough lemon juice to make it a thick paste. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 350.

Butter & flour the bottom of a 9 inch pan.

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Mix the eggs into the milk mixture. Add liquids and lemon zest to dry ingredients, fold in just until there are no dry lumps. Scrape batter into prepared pan, put in the oven. Bake about 30 minutes or until a toothpick in the middle comes out dry. Remove and spread the lemon glaze over it (up to about 1/2 inch from the edges - it will run) while it's still hot.

For the sauce: Smash 2 cups of blackberries (or most any berry) with 1/2 cup of sugar - bring to a boil then let it cool.

Serve. Eat. Be happy.

Poached apricots

The vast majority of fruits are better, or at least as good, fresh as they are cooked. But there are exceptions - quince aren't even edible without cooking (they won't kill you but it's like chewing wood) and sour cherries are a chore to eat out of hand but make excellent pies and especially, sweetened dried cherries. Other fruits are perfectly fine when fresh but become sublime when cooked. That's how I feel about apricots.

Fresh apricots are...okay. Their flavor is very muted even at the peak of ripeness. It's my opinion that the best thing you can do with a fresh apricot is cook it. Today I'm making poached apricots to serve with a lemon-ginger scone of my own creation, though one could certainly use the poached apricots in dozens of desserts. I was inspired by the cornmeal apricot cake in Regan Daley's phenomenal dessert cookbook In The Sweet Kitchen. What makes this dessert cookbook stand out is not the recipes or pictures, though they are wonderful. The first half of the book is a baker's resource, with pan conversions, flavor pairings, and ingredient explanations, along with kitchen tool explanations and recommendations. I've worn my copy out reading and re-reading the ingredient and flavor pairing sections, deciding what to do with my windfall apricots, plums, or hazelnuts.

After poaching, I'll reduce the syrup and store them for a few days. When the time comes, I will serve them with lemon-ginger scones. And people will swoon over my apricot dessert. For real.

Ginger-maple poached apricots recipe

Ingredients:

1 pound fresh apricots
1/2 cup maple syrup (don't use grade A - it has the lightest flavor)
1/2 cup sugar
About 1 ounce fresh ginger root
Lemon
Water

Instructions:
Wash and half the apricots into a bowl. Discard pits.
Peel and slice the ginger into 1/8-1/6 inch thick slices. Use a vegetable peeler to remove the outer zest from the lemon. Keep the rest of the lemon to make lemonade or something.
Put maple syrup, sugar, ginger, and lemon peel into a small saucepan. Add 1 cup of water, stir to dissolve sugar. Add apricots to pan, then add enough water to just cover the apricots.
Turn on heat very low - the idea is to keep the liquid just under a simmer.
Cook for 30 -45 minutes, until the apricots are still intact but soft. Remove apricots to a jar.
Boil remaining liquid with ginger and lemon peel until it's reduced to 1 cup plus a bit. It should be a pleasantly thick syrup.
Strain the syrup through a strainer and pour over the apricots, then keep them in the fridge until use (up to 3-4 days).

Coming soon: my lemon ginger scones - good with these apricots as a shortcake style apricot dessert, or on their own with lemon curd or butter.