Lemon Blueberry Coffee Cake

Hello!

While I was at my mother's last weekend I asked my boyfriend to send me a recipe for something delicious he'd like to have made. So he did, and after my poor kitty passed away I asked him if he could come out to be with me for the last few days I was there. I was pretty upset.

And he did! Because he is a sweetheart. So, while he was riding a bus for ~5 hours, I made him this cake!

Unfortunately I didn't take very many pictures while I was making it. I got a little too into the recipe, but I did take a picture of my Mom's super cute egg timer!

 

A Ladybug!! I think she said she ordered it from Avon! I thought it was adorable.

Lemon Blueberry Coffee Cake:
recipe from Becel

1 1/2 cups		all-purpose flour
1 tsp		baking powder
1/2 tsp		baking soda
1/4 tsp		salt
1/2 cup		margarine
3/4 cup		granulated sugar
1		egg
1 tsp		vanilla
1/2 cup		plain yogurt
1 tbsp		finely grated lemon rind
1 1/2 cups		blueberries

Glaze:

1/2 cup		icing sugar
1 tbsp		lemon juice
2 tsp		margarine

1. In a medium bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
2. In a large bowl, with electric mixer, cream margarine and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Stir in yogurt and lemon rind.
3. Stir dry ingredients into creamed mixture until they are well mixed together. Remove 1 cup of batter; set aside. Spread rest of batter in 8-inch (23 cm) springform pan greased on bottom only. Place reserved batter back in bowl, stir in washed and well-dried blueberries (frozen will work too!). Spread over batter in pan.
4. Bake in 350°F (180°C) oven for 45 to 50 minutes or until it springs back when touched in the centre. Cool for 5 minutes then remove outer ring from pan. Cool completely.
5. In small bowl, mix together icing sugar, lemon juice and margarine until smooth. Drizzle from spoon over cake.
   
   A few things: The recipe calls for fresh blueberries, but using frozen berries isn't a problem. At all. Also, instead of a springform pan I used a regular medium sized square cake pan. This cake will pop out of it just like any other cake would! Just remember to grease it all over.
   
   The preparations say to scooop out a cup of batter and to mix the berries with that, while spreading the rest of the batter on the bottom of the pan. At first I thought this was really silly, and I wasn't going to do it. But, this technique saves berries from sinking to the bottom, giving the cake a solid base that wont crumble and fall away. It also allows the top of the cake to form a kind of crumbly coffee cake texture from the presence of all the blueberries.
   
   This recipe calls for plain yogurt. I was very excited when I saw that my mother had all the ingredients I needed to make this cake, but she only had little packs of yogurt. I didn't really want to go out and buy a whole tub of plain yogurt, so I had resigned myself to using a packet of vanilla. It wouldn't make a huge difference, anyway.
   
   Much to my dismay, when I was halfway through mixing the cake and I went to get a packet of yogurt, they were all dessert yogurts! So, I chose the lemon meringue pie packet, since it seemed appropriate with the recipe. Lemon really does bring out the best of blueberries.
   
   And the cake came out fine! It was so delicious, Pip ate almost all of it in one night. The cake itself was moist and popping with berries, and the glaze gave it a bright kick of lemon.

Yum Yum Yum. I wish there was another one.

And of course, after I finished making the cake and I told my Mom about my yogurt woes, she tells me there was a tub of plain yogurt in the fridge all along. Oh well!