When I was growing up, “Eat your spinach” was touted as the route to good health. I can still sing the Popeye spinach song, too: “…I’m strong to the finich, cause I eats me spinach.” (Damn. That little earworm will be in my head all day now.)
Today, it’s “Eat your blueberries,” and with good reason. Blueberries are a spectacularly healthy food. (No disrespect to spinach, by the way.)
A North American native first commercially cultivated here in the early 1900s, blueberries are rich in Vitamin C and Vitamin K. They are rich in flavonoids—an antioxidant widely credited with protecting memory and fighting inflammation. They’re good for your waistline, too; a cup of blueberries has only 84 calories and comes in low on the glycemic index. No wonder blueberries are often called a superfood!
To befit their importance, blueberries have their own month (July) and their own emoji.
And about those emojis… I confess to being among the pitifully uninformed on emojis and their origins. As it turns out, the word “emoji” is actually a combination of Japanese words for picture and character. Emojis trace their beginnings to a popular meme on Japanese mobile phones in the 1990s. The father of the emoji was Shigetaka Kurita, a digital artist whose original work is now among the collections at the Museum of Modern Art. CNN did an interesting piece on Kurita; here is a link: CNN Shigetaka Kurita profile.
Fast forward to today and the current state of emojis, I didn’t realize that “official” emojis were a thing. Apparently, in an effort to standardize emoji use, there is an organization called the Unicode Consortium. To date, the Consortium has recognized more than three thousand standard emojis, the blueberry emoji among them. They are scheduled to add more in 2022 including a hand forming a heart.
This recipe is adapted from the cookbook Zoe Bakes Cakes. The cookbook is available from your local bookstore and on Amazon here..
Blueberry Muffin Cake
Ingredients
- For the Cake:
- 10 T. unsalted butter (at room temperature)
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 C. all-purpose flour
- 1/4 C. cornmeal
- 1/2 C. almond flour
- 1 t. baking powder
- 1/4 t. kosher salt
- 2 eggs (room temperature)
- 1/2 C. whole milk (room temperature)
- 1 t. vanilla extract
- 2 C. fresh (or frozen) blueberries
- For The Topping:
- 1/2 C. chopped pecans
- 3 T. granulated sugar
- 1/2 t. ground cinnamon
- 1 pinch kosher salt
- 2 T. unsalted butter (cut into 8 pieces)
- For Garnish:
- Sweetened whipped Cream
- Fresh blueberries
Directions
- Step 1 Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. and grease an 8-inch springform pan with butter. Line the buttered springform pan with greased parchment paper.
- Step 2 Process butter, sugar, flours, cornmeal, baking powder, salt, eggs, milk and vanilla in the bowl of your food processor until smooth.
- Step 3 Pour batter into the prepared springform pan. Sprinkle the blueberries on top of the batter.
- Step 4 Bake your cake for about 40 minutes. You want the middle of the cake to be set and beginning to brown.
- Step 5 While the cake is baking, prepare the topping. Combine the pecans, sugar, cinnamon and salt. Sprinkle the topping over the cake. Distribute the butter over the topping. Return the cake to the oven and bake for another 10 minutes until a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the middle of the cake.
- Step 6 Remove the cake from the oven and let it cool. You want to the cake to cool until it is about room temperature. Run a knife around the edge of the cake and then remove the sides of the springform pan.
- Step 7 Serve the cake with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.
