It’s been a while, mainly because my oven broke down. I was whipping up a traybake cake and had put the oven on to warm up whilst I was mixing. When I looked at it, 30 minutes later, it hadn’t managed to reach 100˚F yet-what a disaster! Nothing I did was making it work.
At least I rescued most of my batter by baking it in batches in my air fryer, but that isn’t something that I wanted to do regularly. So, no oven (the cooktop still worked) meant no baking, and the problem of finding a repairer for this sort of thing in the back of beyond. It took a while but we found someone, who identified the problem (the controller), ordered a new part and had it repaired in just a couple of days. We were told that, at its age (a whole 8 years old!) we were lucky that it had lasted so long! Am I alone in thinking that an appliance that cost over $1000 should last a little longer than 8 years? Anyway, two thumbs up for our repairer guy, who did a great job, and ‘yah, boo sucks’ to Frigidaire, who apparently make crap with a short shelf-life and sell it for big bucks. Not that any of the other big manufacturers are any better, apparently, according to our repairer, who sees the same thing with all of them. Oh well, rant over, at least I’m back in bake mode, for as long as it lasts this time.
I’d found a bag of blueberries in the freezer. I’d obviously bought them for something (can’t remember what) but the fruit was fine and still in date. I thought I’d celebrate having a working oven by baking a Blueberry-Lemon Loaf.
| ½ cup/ 120 ml milk* |
| 1 tbsp lemon zest ** |
| 2 tbsp lemon juice |
| 2 cups/260 g all-purpose flour (plus 1 tsp for flouring fruit) |
| ¼ tsp salt |
| ¼ tsp baking soda |
| 1 cup/140 g fresh or frozen blueberries (do not defrost if frozen) |
| 1 stick/½ cup/115g unsalted butter, softened |
| 2 large eggs |
| 1¼ cups/250g granulated sugar |
** not essential, provides a stronger lemon flavour but can be made without.
Preheat the oven to 350˚F/180˚C/Gas 4
Grease a suitable loaf tin -5 x 9 inch preferable. I used my pyrex glass loaf pan.
Add the lemon juice and zest (if using) to the milk and stir, then set aside for at least 10 minutes. The milk will curdle, this is fine.
Place the flour (2 cups), soda and salt into a bowl and whisk to mix well. Set aside.
Toss the blueberries in 1 tsp flour and set aside.
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, mixing between each addition. If the mixture looks like it is curdling, add 1 tbsp of the flour mixture.
Beat in ⅓ of the flour mixture, then add half of the milk/lemon mix. Repeat with flour, then the rest of the liquid, finishing with flour. Mix well after each addition.
Add the floured blueberries and fold in. Transfer to the prepared loaf dish and smooth the top.
Bake for 50 -60 minutes, or so, in the centre of the preheated oven. Loaf is finished when a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, before removing and completing cooling on a rack.
Make a simple glace icing, with icing sugar and lemon juice, to drizzle over the cake when cool.
A nice light cake with a lemony crumb and a fruity finish. I was very pleased to have got back into the baking groove with this one.
The Pudding Queen 