After last week’s lemon and blueberry pancake extravaganza for Shrove Tuesday, I had half a lemon and about 50g of blueberries rattling around the fridge. As nothing goes to waste in these tight times, I figured I may as well turn them into a cake. We’re big fans of cake in the Munching Matilda South London test kitchen so I knew that if I nailed this bad boy, it would not last very long.
To create a lemon and blueberry cake, I’ve adapted a fairly easy sponge cake recipe, taken the cream cheese frosting on my absolutely ridiculous salted caramel spiced carrot cake to the next level and created a jammy blueberry syrup to swirl through the luscious batter. With the frosting, I added a dollop of sour cream when I ran a bit short of cream cheese – it worked way better than I feared so I’ve included it in the recipe below.
I won’t lie – the cake is a bit of a faff but it’s worth it. Do not be scared of making a sponge cake – I’ve always had excellent results with this combination of ingredients. And if you just want to make a good old fashioned Victoria sponge, you can make this recipe minus the blueberry syrup and bake in two sandwich tins. The cake batter makes a pretty generous quantity.
Set aside some time on a weekend afternoon, turn up the music and get baking. The cooking time will vary depending on your oven – mine is terrible and I want to beat it with hammers – so do keep an eye on the cake – it may be worth setting the oven timer for 25 minutes and checking back and cooking in five-minute increments if your oven is a bit unreliable. If it runs too hot, put foil on top of the cake to stop the top of it turning into the surface of Mars. You don’t want the Perseverance mission knocking on your door and demanding your cake for research purposes.