Lemon Blueberry Cake w/ Lemon Zest Coconut Frosting: food fight friday ya’ll

in #fff6 years ago

It’s another Food Fight Friday and I’m super excited to share this recipe with you. I made this for a very special persons birthday and in addition to celebrating their life, this, along with a hand written card, was the birthday present. Remember, I don’t have any special mixers or cake pans so if I could make this in my humble kitchen so can you.

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Lemon Blueberry Cake With Lemon Zest Coconut Frosting

I set out to create my personal baking masterpiece and although there were some uncertainties during the process I think it turned out spectacular. I have never attempted to bake such a cake before so there was a tiny bit of concern with my lack of tools. I mean I didn’t even have a cake pan let alone an electric mixer for the frosting. I forged ahead anyway…

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Lemon Blueberry Cake Ingredients:

1/3 Cup Coconut Oil
200 ml Almond Milk (or a lil over 3/4 C)
4 Tbsp. Lemon Juice
2 Tbsp. Lemon Zest
8 Tbsp. Agave
1 Tsp. Vanilla Extract
3/4 Cup Almond Meal
3/4 Cup Gluten Free Flour Blend
2 Tsp. Baking Powder
1/4 Tsp. Baking Soda
1 Cup Blueberries

  • Pinch of Sea Salt

I also purchased a couple tin cake pans because I didn’t have a cake pan.

Lemon Zest Coconut Frosting:

1 Can Coconut Milk (make sure it is FULL FAT)
2 Tbsp. Lemon Juice
2 Tbsp. Agave (plus a tad extra for good measure)
1/2 Tsp. Vanilla Extract

I used an additional cup of blueberries and zest from a full lemon to decorate

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So as this special birthday person is hanging at the house I’m trying to make, bake and create this cake without too much commotion. All the while keeping it a semi-surprise because it is supposed to be a present.

It’s about 9:00am on a Friday morning and once the cake is made we plan to head towards the beach on our bicycles fully equipped with games and snacks like dominoes, smash ball, frisbee, water and delicious grapes from the farmers market. That means I have to hold him off for a good hour and a half.

First, I quietly begin zesting my lemons with my multi functioning grater. I think the lemon zest was so refreshing and beautiful that I made quite a bit more than I needed but that was okay because I added some to my morning smoothie. Super invigorating!

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DISCLAIMER: Keep the coconut milk in the refrigerator over night so the meat separates from the water- this is imperative for the frosting to work.

Now back to what I was saying… add the coconut oil, almond milk, lemon juice, lemon zest, agave, vanilla extract, sea salt and almond meal together in a bowl. If you have a whisk then go ahead and break it out here. I do not have a whisk so got to work using a common fork.

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Then sift in the flour, baking powder and baking soda whisking everything together.

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Right about now my mix looked a little curdled and I wasn’t sure if I had combined everything in the right order or in the right way. I also do not have a sifter so this may have been the problem too, but I continued to forge ahead.

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Throw in that cup of fresh blueberries (I probably added a tad more because why not) and gently fold the berries into the batter.

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With your oven pre-heated at 350 and your cake pan nice and greased, go ahead and pour the batter into your cake dish. Set your timer for 30 minutes or until the cake is golden brown!

So, again, here I was a little concerned that the cake would rise and volcano over the pan flooding my oven. I placed the cake on the center rack of my oven with a cookie sheet underneath acting as a cake batter diaper. This later proved to be unnecessary.

With the cake safely baking I turned my attention to the mess I had made.

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Does anyone else’s kitchen look like this when they cook? Maybe I channel the Tasmanian devil while creating food… 🤷🏼‍♀️

Once cleanup is done I hear the very special birthday person say something about being hungry. This reminded me of my hunger as well so I got to work on some organic rainbow breakfast potatoes.

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The purple ones were my fave and this feeding of the birthday person bought me some more time in the kitchen.

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Once you check your cake with a tooth pick or with a knife like me, let it cool all the way down to room temp. This part takes a lot of self restraint and even more skill to keep your very special birthday person away from it.

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So if you have an electric mixer now is the time to bust it out. I don’t have a mixer of any kind and had to get creative with my whipping (more on that in a minute).

Start by taking that can of coconut milk out of the refrigerator. Remember the Disclaimer I wrote up towards the beginning… I hope you paid attention because if you didn’t then your frosting has already failed. Open the can of coconut milk upside down so the water will now be at the top (you can save this for smoothies).

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Add the vanilla and lemon to the coconut, then the agave and beat with a mixer, if you have one (should be pretty fluffy).

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If you don’t have one then grab two forks and warm your elbow up because we are about to get serious.

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Whisk, whip, mix and beat that cream up into a beautiful fluffy frosting (or do your best with what you have and have faith in the confection gods).

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Removing the cake from its pan was such a treat. Look at all of this gorgeous marbling of the blueberries. Only do this when the cake is 100% cooled or else you risk the cake crumbling.

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I just poured my not so fluffy frosting right on the cake and let it drip down the sides figuring it’ll harden in the refrigerator while we are off enjoying a beach day.

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I added that set aside cup of blueberries and extra zest to finish it off. Even at this point I wasn’t sure if the cake would turn out that well because the frosting was more like a liquid something, but I forged ahead staying positive.

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Yes the lemons were placed there for #foodfightfriday picture taking purposes 🤷🏼‍♀️

We went to the beach while the cake ‘set’ in the refrigerator. Playing smash ball, eating grapes and listening to the waves crashing back and forth took up our entire afternoon. Thai food was on the agenda for dinner and on our way home we stopped at our favorite ice-creamery where we picked up a few scoops of chocolate hazelnut almond chip ice cream (dairy free of course).

A few crackling pitchy notes and blown out candles later we enjoyed a piece of Lemon Blueberry Cake along side a scoop of ice cream.

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My very special birthday person pointed out that it wasn’t so much a cake as it was a pie… I negotiated the “pie” into being called a tart… and I must say, he loved every bite of that “cake-tart”. The best part to me is that it was gluten free, processed sugar free and dairy free, so pretty much it was basically a Buddha bowl or green smoothie or something. I didn’t even get the least bit concerned when we ate some for breakfast the next day!

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If you’re still with me and want to try your hand at this cake, I say “go for it”. It’s much more tedious than difficult and I didn’t use one single special tool to help me. I hope if you do make this then you share your results with me :)

Thank you for all of your support Food Fight Fam and I’m looking forward to today’s food slingers.

Keep forging along & Pura Vida ✌️

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This looks delicious inside out. I enjoyed the process shots from start to finish. There is something satisfying about seeing something yummy being created. My oven needs fixing for me to continue baking at the moment. So the list of recipes to try out keeps piling up. Congratulations on the curie :D

Thank you @adamada! From perusing Steemit accounts ive made quite a ‘todo’ list of recipes to make myself :) Isn’t it great?!? Have a great weekend!

Wow, that looks super amazing I do love a good blueberry dessert!

It turned out far better than I anticipated and the touch of lemon gave it a zesty flavor- my very special person was pretty happy. Now I’m going to have to top this cake every year…🤔

Thank you @jackofcrows !

Eh, the luckiest guy I know has birthdays too?! That trake tart chake thing was sofa king good though. It didn’t stand a chance!

I never understood how having your cake and eating it too is a bad thing.

But do you know how well you put this thing together? Great job on the post, too, gorgeous! Bra frikkin Vo, as in bravo like MGK standing his ground, bravo.

Haha… I’m so glad you liked it. As I said, I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out but I forged ahead and you loved it- so success!

Yeah, who doesn’t want to eat their own cake 🤷🏼‍♀️

Thank you, thank you my love. I’m just trying to keep up with you Rockstar.

Ka’pow! “Going.... Going....... Gone!!”

Congratulations on the @curie visit beautifullest, shooooot.
insert my roger-rabbit dance right here

Yummy 😋
Pie or cake
Either way it’s still gonna taste great

Haha when u talked about it rising in oven I thought about this episode I watched as a kid!

Please take 4 min to watch this! It’s so funny

Haha… that’s too cute! Thanks for sending it @geneeverett.

This is definitely amazing the truth is birthday cakes are always what I dream of getting one day, I must tell you, you're not just a fantastic blogger, you're an amazing instructor. I hast to for back to pay attention to your disclaimer and I was thinking that many peppy could have ignored this and then have problem with the frosting process.
It's quite difficult to take picture process with the kind of precision here and that's what I love about the cake baking process really.
It's a beautiful process one that's explanatory enough for me to follow and bake mine.
Well done this is amazing.

Thank you @josediccus I really appreciate your reading my blog. I try and make it as easy as possible and relatable too, you see all of the mistakes I make and how I overcome them. I think everyone should spend some time in the kitchen because it’s quite therapeutic.

I encourage you to have a go at it and take pics throughout the process- it’ll turn out great! You could even swap out another berry for blueberries 🤷🏼‍♀️

Thanks again for the comment/compliment :)

And thank you for a beautifully composed content like this 😀😀

Yikes, this is amazing! Happy birthday to your special person...what a special cake. Lemons and blueberries take my heart away...well done. Beach, Thai food and this, what else do you need, you're in heaven :)

Hey, haha… thanks @birdsinparadise. He thought it was a winner- I’m glad too because I was a little uncertain there for a minute. You know you could plop me on any beach with any kind of food and I’ll be happy as a clam. Always a pleasure having you stop by :)

Truly a masterpiece my Dear Puravidaville, I only wish I could have a piece. But I guess the lucky special BD person ate it, all lol 🌸💖🌸

Thank you @lenasveganliving. Very special birthday person certainly did eat it all. Haha… I can’t wait to settle and get necessary things like a mixer, flour sifter (especially beneficial for gluten free flours) and whatever else I may need. All of the cakes made on Mondays give me great inspiration.

Congratulations @puravidaville !!

You have received a manual curation upvote from @steemkitchen as a motivation and support for your original quality content.

For more rewards and fabuLicious recipes, be part of the food lover community on @steemkitchen’s discord.

Have a fabuLicious day!
@joyrobinson of @steemkitchen

Thanks @steemkitchen. I really appreciate the support!

Your cake looks amazing and yes, whenever I cook, there is messes before the cooking and there is also messes after the cooking, and then there is messes after the eating too :-)

I know it, it seems there are always dishes to be done. My husband is really good at cleaning up the “after” mess. Thank you for stopping by @icybc :)

Yuuummm, get in my mouth you glorious natural masterpiece of nutritional goodness. I need to make a birthday cake for my friends birthday, I may give this one a whirl, she loooves blueberries. Then she’ll have to share it with me ;)

Let me know how it turns out. It was a winner over here. The problem becomes how are you going to top that every year 🤷🏼‍♀️

Thanks for stopping by @stuffing !