Blueberry Cake with Lemon Blueberry Sauce
Submitted by eddo1
Old-fashioned blueberry cake topped with hard sauce and a hot lemon-blueberry compote that melts the butter into the warm cake. A classic New England dessert with bright berry flavor.
YIELD
16 servingsPREP
15 minCOOK
50 minREADY
1 hrsThis is dessert from a different era, when cake came warm to the table and got crowned with two sauces (one cold and rich, one hot and bright). The contrast is the whole point: room-temperature hard sauce melts into the warm blueberry cake the moment a hot lemon-blueberry compote hits the top.
Cake flour matters here. Its lower protein content gives a more tender, finer crumb than all-purpose flour can manage, especially in a one-egg cake like this one. The result holds the blueberries suspended throughout instead of letting them sink to the bottom.
Flour-tossing the berries before folding in is the trick. The thin coating of flour gives the berries something to grip in the batter, keeping them evenly distributed instead of all rolling to the bottom of the pan during baking.
For the sauce, the lemon juice is the bright counterweight. Without it, you get jam; with it, the sauce stays sharp and lifts the cake’s gentle vanilla flavor.
Pro Tips
- Use fresh blueberries when in season. Frozen work but bleed more color into the batter, turning the cake gray-blue.
- Stir only until the dry ingredients disappear. Overmixing develops gluten and toughens the cake.
- Make the hard sauce ahead and bring to room temperature before serving. Cold hard sauce won’t melt properly under the hot blueberry sauce.
- Serve the cake warm, not hot. Hot cake crumbles; warm cake holds together but stays tender.
Variations
- Swap blueberries for raspberries or blackberries for a different berry profile.
- Add lemon zest to the cake batter for extra citrus brightness throughout.
- Splash a tablespoon of bourbon or rum into the hard sauce for a grown-up version.
Ingredients
Directions
For the cake:
Sift flour, measure and add baking powder and salt. Cream shortening, add sugar gradually until light and fluffy.
Add dry ingredients alternately with the milk. Stir only enough to blend.
Wash the berries and toss with flour to lightly coat. Gently fold the floured berries into the cake batter.
Pour into greased 8×8 pan and bake at 375 for 25 to 35 minutes or until cake tester just comes out clean.
For the sauce
Put berries, lemon juice and sugar in a saucepan over medium high heat until boiling.
Reduce heat and cook until the berries are just tender.
Serve the cake with a small knob of hard sauce on top of it, and the warm sauce poured over all.
( For hard sauce combine about ¼ cup butter with confectioners sugar beat together add more sugar until the consistency is firm but not hard. Add a dash of vanilla. )
The cake is best served warm, not hot.
The hard sauce should be about room temperature and the blueberry sauce should be hot enough to melt some of the hard sauce when you pour it over the cake.
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