September

Foraging for blackberries and fall colours

Blackberry meringue cake

We went foraging this weekend for blackberries and were lucky. This is the first cake I made in our new home, our new kitchen and in a new oven. It's a gas oven and I will surely need some time to get used to and to bond with. Quite a special relationship between a baker and his/her oven, right?
And with a newborn in the house there is just no time to bake. On some days it's a struggle to find the time to cook (so blessed are frozen and canned foods these days!) and I can be lucky if it's still hot when I come to eat it. So making a cake is somewhat a luxury now that I cherish and it tasted even sweeter.

BLACKBERRY MERINGUE CAKE
100ml vegetable oil
125g brown sugar
4 eggs
200g flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 lemon (juice and zest)
pinch of salt
100g caster sugar
Preheat oven to 175-195°C. Separate the yolk and white of 3 of the 4 eggs. Mix the oil and brown sugar with a hand held blender, add the one egg and 3 yolks, salt, lemon juice and zest and beat until pale. Mix the baking powder and the flour and sift, gently adding to the mixture. Pour into a baking tin and bake for about 30 minutes. Sprinkle the blackberries on top and bake for another 20 minutes and take out of the oven. Reduce the temperature of the oven to 125°C. To make the meringue whisk the 3 egg whites in a metal bowl until they start to form peaks and add the sugar. Beat some more until stiff and glossy. Now spread over the slightly cooled cake and put back in the oven to bake for another 45 minutes to an hour. The meringue topping should be golden on the outside and have a nice crunch to it.