Lemon Blueberry Coffee Cake

I’ve been waiting to make this cake for quite a while. I don’t know why I waited so long, as the recipe doesn’t really call for anything unusual. It is certainly springy and it just wouldn’t be right to make this in December! I think one of the reasons I took so long to make it is that the recipe was that it required a bit of tweaking and I was just being lazy. I spotted this recipe on a British baking blog, Mainly Baking. She often will take a basic or starter recipe and change it up a little bit with different flavors and additions. I love to see how one recipe can be changed.

I finally just typed up the recipe, made sure I had all of the elements and made it. This cake just smells like spring! The lemon is so fragrant and wonderful. If you don’t have dried blueberries, you could use another dried fruit and you could try it with fresh fruit, too. I think fresh fruit would work great as long as it doesn’t contain too much water.

I changed the cake a bit, as the original called for flour, ground almonds, and cornmeal. I don’t necessarily care for the texture that cornmeal adds, unless I use the super finely ground cornmeal and I didn’t have any of that on hand. I thought the cake would be great with the flour and ground almonds; it still has some extra texture from the almonds. Lemon and blueberry is a classic springy combination, and it’s wonderful here. I would perhaps add more blueberries next time, as it seemed like there could be more. Overall, this was a wonderful, springy cake.

Lemon Blueberry Coffee Cake
½ cup dried blueberries
1-1/2 cups self-rising flour*
1½ tsp baking powder
½ cup ground almonds
finely grated zest 2 lemons
¾ cup sugar
2 eggs
8 ounces yogurt or sour cream
¼ cup vegetable oil

½ cup plain flour
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup coconut
3 tablespoons oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray an 8” round cake pan with cooking spray and line the bottom with parchment paper. Spray the parchment and set aside. 

Place the dried blueberries in a small bowl and cover with hot water. Allow to sit for 10 minutes; drain and set aside. In a large bowl, combine the self-rising flour, baking powder, and ground almonds. In a small bowl rub together with your fingertips the lemon zest and sugar. Add the sugar mixture to the flour mixture. Make a well in the center of the flour/sugar mixture.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, yogurt and oil. Add to the flour/sugar mixture and stir with a spatula until just combined. The mixture may be lumpy. Stir in the dried blueberries. Spread the better in the prepared pan.

Make the topping: in a medium bowl stir together the flour, sugar, coconut and oil. The mixture will be crumbly. Sprinkle on top of the cake batter.

Bake for 40-50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean. If the cake seems to be browning too quickly, cover with foil after baking for 30 minutes.

Recipe from Mainly Baking and  BBC Good Food

*I make my own self-rising flour by combining 2 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoon salt