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Buttermilk Cake with Blackberries

in Diana's Recipe Book

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Servings: 8
 
Comments:
Adding Beaumes-de-Venise — a delicate, fruity dessert wine — keeps this cake moist and adds a whole new dimension to its flavor. Combining blackberries with blackberry preserves for the topping brings out the best in the berries, whether they’re tart or sweet.

Ingredients:
For Cake:
2 cups cake flour (not self-rising)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick/4 oz./113g) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 cup well-shaken buttermilk

For Topping:
3/4 cup Beaumes-de-Venise or other white dessert wine
4 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 (3 x 1-inch) strip fresh orange zest
1/3 cup seedless blackberry preserves or 1/2 cup blackberry preserves with seeds, strained
4 cups fresh blackberries (about 1 1/2 pounds)

Instructions:
For Cake:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F/180 degrees C.

Line bottom of a buttered 9 x 2-inch round cake pan with a round of wax paper, then butter paper.

Sift together flour, baking powder and soda, and salt. Beat together butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy, then beat in vanilla. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition, then, with mixer at low speed, beat in all of buttermilk until just combined. Add flour mixture in 3 batches, mixing after each addition until just combined.

Spoon batter into cake pan, smoothing top, and bake in middle of oven until golden and a tester comes out clean, 40 to 50 minutes. Cool in pan on a rack 10 minutes, then run a thin sharp knife around edge of cake to loosen. Invert onto rack, then slide cake onto a cake plate.

For Topping:
Bring wine, 3 tablespoons sugar, and zest to a boil in a small heavy saucepan, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Boil until syrup is reduced to about 2/3 cup, 1 to 2 minutes. Discard zest.

Reserve 2 tablespoons syrup and pour remainder slowly and evenly over cake (cake will absorb syrup).

Stir together reserved syrup, preserves, and remaining tablespoon sugar in small saucepan and simmer, stirring occasionally, until thickened slightly, about 1 minute (it should be the consistency of a thick syrup). Put blackberries in a large bowl, then pour preserves mixture over berries. Gently stir berries with a rubber spatula to coat, then pour over cake, mounding blackberries on top.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

Cooks' Note:
Cake can be made (without syrup and topping) 1 day ahead, cooled completely, then kept at room temperature, wrapped in plastic wrap.

Makes 8 servings.

Source: Gourmet, 2001
Date: June 16, 2007

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