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Showing posts with label Blueberries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blueberries. Show all posts

Saturday, 12 December 2015

BluBlu Cheesecake

Recipe base from The Hummingbird Bakery Book.

One of the things that I really appreciate about living in Sweden, is the having the option to pick your own fruit in the beautiful forests.

I have determinedly partaking in this activity since I moved here, and whilst I am not as skilled as others at picking a huge quantity, I am nevertheless always excited to have enough to do something with other than through a bunch into yoghurt.

Fresh from the forest
Swedish blueberries are so beautiful: unlike the American varieties (that I believe are not technically blueberries, but a relative of them), they have as dark purple flesh as their skin.

Having been disappointed with my Blueberry Cake, I was reluctant to make another with my handpicked fruit, so went with a recipe base that I felt was more reliable: cheesecake.

Gorgeous
The base cheesecake mixture was beautiful, and I must be sounding like a broken record where cheesecakes are concerned, as this was another mixture that I truly felt sad about baking.

In they go!
I had washed and frozen my blueberries on the day they were picked, and found that the water on them made them clump together slightly. Nothing too dramatic, but after a conversation with a colleague, I tried washing then air-drying the fruit overnight before freezing and this made a much 'looser' and easier-to-manipulate batch.

From the oven

I appreciate that the appearance is aesthetically pleasing as when you have the fruit and its sauce over the top, however I have never truly appreciated that style in terms of taste. Then again, I have only had shop bought versions, and I like very few mass-produced cheesecakes.

Available at Samara's Baked Goods

Thursday, 16 January 2014

Blueberry Cake

Recipe based on The Hummingbird Bakery Recipe Book.

The batter was lovely and smooth, and I thought I would make it extra special by using my precious handpicked Swedish blueberries that a colleague and I had collected, and then put into the freezer (after washing them of course).


Despite the recipe recommending that the cake go into a 25cm ring tin, I found the batter quite plentiful, and barely fitted into my 26cm ring tin.


The cake took over an hour to bake, and developed a large unsightly crack on the top (something I am becoming more accustomed to seeing when following recipes from this book), which then became oozy during its bake.


I was unhappy with the way the cake turned out; it was quite a damp one, and I've never been a fan of that type (which is probably why I don't like fruit cakes), so didn't feel it was worth my while to ice it.