Thank You Cake…

Sometimes you know a good thing when you see it.  That’s the way I feel about this cake.  I have made it several times and each time I vary it a little depending on what I have and what I am in the mood for. Sometimes lemon, thyme and strawberry, other times I add blackberries and mint.  Any way you shake it, it always turns out fabulous!

Recently, my kids went to stay with their Grandparents. Jacob went to stay with my parents, Noah with Matt’s parents and we had the weekend to ourselves.  We celebrated our anniversary a little early ????

We had 3 days with absolutely no plans and we just puttered around hitting a lot of our favorite places.  We had breakfast at a neat retro diner in the Broad Ripple area of Indy, went to a neat street festival, a wine event, to a new brewery,went to 2 different farmers markets, listened to a band play outdoors in downtown Indianapolis, ate a lot of great food and just really hung out like old times.  You may notice a pattern here of eating , sitting and drinking.  That’s because there was one.

I really, really like neat and obscure wine.  I am a fan of Malbec, Cabernet and the occasional Rioja.  I have a place nearby that I love that has a whole wall of wine under $15 that you can enjoy in the shop along with small plates of food. Mass Ave Wine Shop  I know the owner and she always steers me in the right direction.  My husband is a huge (and that’s an understatement) of craft beers.  Specifically IPA’s.  He is always on the hunt for something new he has never had (hard to do) and he saves the caps.  Some kind of project he has going on in the garage….

So the nice thing about this is you can’t (at least we don’t) over imbibe.  My husband doesn’t want to drink 2000 calories and I don’t want a red wine headache ????

But we have a few spots we like to visit and when we can we do.  We also went to the tapas restaurant that we go to every anniversary.  I will talk more about that later..in another post when I post the recipe from one of the things we had!

So back to the cake.  I wanted to thank our respective families for taking on the boys for a few days so I made them each a cake.  I wanted to use what I had gotten recently from a local vendor before they went bad.  So the choice was easy!  Blueberry lime cake it was!!

This makes 1- 13×9 or 2 -9 inch rounds.  I made a double recipe so it made 4 9 inch cakes for me ????

The blueberries sink to the bottom sometimes.  When you make a cake that you turn onto a plate it looks like an upside down cake ????

Blueberry-Lime Cake

2 C all purpose flour
1 1/2 C milk (I used 1%)
1 C sugar
Juice of 1 large lime
zest of that large lime
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
3/4 C of softened butter, unsalted
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
a pinch of salt
1 pint or 2 C of blueberries, fresh

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spray or butter pans of your choice.
Add all dry ingredients (not sugar) plus zest in one bowl.  In another beat butter until whipped.  Add sugar and cream. Add eggs, one at a time until incorporated.  Then add the lime juice and lastly the vanilla.
Slowly add the dry ingredients.  Fold in the washed (and DRY) blueberries.
Add to the pan. 
Bake for 30-35 minutes.  Keep an eye on it.  13×9 may take longer.  Do the toothpick test ????

Now I glazed these cakes but they are very, very good unglazed.

Glaze:
In a small bowl add the juice of 1 large lime, it’s zest and whisk in enough powdered sugar to give it the consistency that you like.  Obviously more for a thick glaze…less for a thinner one ????

My kids love this.  Sometimes, well a lot of the time, I substitute lemon and make it without any berries at all.  My oldest requests this cake a lot.  They like it when it is a little stale, odd I know!

So next time you want to thank someone …maybe think about making this cake!  It is quick, easy and bound to please anyones sweet tooth!

I had to make them a little one of their own to try before they left ????