The Alice's Tea Cup Lemon Blueberry Cake with Buttercream Frosting

Though I turned 30 at the beginning of the month, we had to put off the actual celebration until slightly after the real date of my birth, due to a general state of busy, not to mention the fact that the actual date fell on a Tuesday. Who has time to celebrate on a tuesday anyway? Besides, I really had no idea what sort of cake I wanted.

A trip to the library sorted that dilemma out in short order. After perusing a lovely cookbook entitled "Alice's Tea Cup," named after the restaurant owned by the writers of said cookbook, I quickly settled on a lemon blueberry cake with buttercream frosting.

However, that was far from an easy decision. I have since gone through this cookbook and post-it noted every recipe I wanted to try. The aftermath was a devastation of post-it notes. And if the cake recipe is any indication of how awesome the scones will be, I need to set aside some serious baking time, because this cake was, in a word, heaven.

 

Lemon Blueberry Cake with Buttercream Frosting (from Alice's tea Cup)

I won't be providing the recipe here, because 1. if you want the recipe you should really buy the book and 2. the New York Daily news has already provided it on their website (click on the link above).

My husband gathered all the ingredients, including the less familiar but happily inexpensive buttermilk (it was my birthday cake after all, so why should I have to make it?). He then mixed it all together.

He poured a third of the batter into a parchment paper-lined 9-in round baking pan. Then, he did the same for the remaining two-thirds. Since we only have two 9-in round baking pans, this did require a little down time  before the third one could go in the oven, but in the end, it worked out fine.

Then, it was time for the frosting. If you've been reading my blog for any duration of time, you probably know that, in my house, I am the sole maker of the frosting. I just do it better. I followed the directions mostly but subbed in the skim milk we had for the whole milk the frosting called for. I also cut the sweetness with a small handful of flour.

The actual frosting of the cake was quite the affair. Worried that we would run low, I skimped on the frosting between each layer of the cake, which was a smart move. By the end, I had used every scrap of that frosting to get the cake fully covered, so if you want a nice heaping of frosting between layers, make a double batch of the frosting.

It turned out just decadent. The cake was crumby but moist and very lemony with the blueberries adding just the right amount of sweetness. The frosting was sweet but not too sweet (thanks to the added flour) and the buttercream flavor paired well with the lemon. I've seem recipes for lemon blueberry cake that uses cream cheese frosting, but the cake was rich enough on it's own without adding cream cheese into the picture. I think that would have been too much. 

Within a week, we'd eaten every bite of this cake and we plan on making it again. It's lemony and sweet and polka-dot pretty. What more could you want in a cake?