“When you bake with fruit, you often get beautiful colours dotted throughout the bakes,” says baker Jane Dunn. “Combining berry and citrus flavours is always delicious. You can try lemon and raspberry, blackberry and lemon, or as in this cake, blueberry and lime. I adore it.
“Baking with blueberries always brings out their flavour and creates a delicious texture, and when topped with a simple buttercream frosting it’s even better.”
Read: The power of blueberries
Serves: 8–10
Ingredients
- 200g unsalted butter
- 200g caster sugar
- 200g self-raising flour, plus 1 tablespoon for dusting
- 4 eggs
- zest of 1 lime
- 200g fresh or frozen blueberries
Buttercream:
- 125g unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 250g icing sugar
- juice of 1 lime
For the decoration:
- 100g blueberries
- lime zest
Method
Preheat the oven to 180ºC/160ºC fan and grease and line a 900g loaf tin with baking paper.
Read: Healthier Blueberry Muffins
Put the butter and caster sugar into a bowl and beat until light and fluffy. Add the self-raising flour, eggs and lime zest to the bowl, and mix again until combined.
Put the tablespoon of plain flour into a bowl and add the blueberries, mixing until they are coated (this stops the blueberries sinking to the bottom of the cake).
Fold the blueberries through the cake mixture, then pour into the prepared tin and bake for 50–55 minutes, or until baked through.
Remove the cake from the oven, and leave to cool fully in the tin while you make the buttercream.
Add the butter to a bowl and beat on its own for a few minutes to loosen and soften. Add the icing sugar and beat again until combined. Finally, add the lime juice and beat again.
Pipe or spread the buttercream onto the loaf cake, then sprinkle over the blueberries and lime zest.
How to customise
The blueberries can be swapped for any other berry you like, such as raspberries or blackberries.
The lime can also be switched for another citrus fruit, such as orange or lemon.
Read: Blueberry Buttermilk Cake
If you don’t want to make a buttercream topping, make a lime drizzle instead by mixing 200g icing sugar with three to four tablespoons of lime juice.
Jane’s Patisserie by Jane Dunn is published by Ebury Press. Photography by Ellis Parrinder, available now.
Which berry and citrus mix do you most want to try? Please share how the recipe turned out in the comments section below.
– With PA