Ottolenghi Lemon Blueberry Cake

And an upcoming Live chat with Yotam Ottolenghi

I’m super excited to announce that I’ll be doing a Live Chat and Video here on Substack with the one and only Yotam Ottolenghi. We thought it would be fun to connect using the new Live streaming feature, and we’ll be talking about creativity in the kitchen and where we get inspiration, in addition to each of us making a recipe.

Photo by Elena Heatherwick

To tune in, you can either use the Substack app (download it in advance here) and an icon will show up in the app when we’re about to go Live, so you can join us, or you’ll get an email when we’re about to go Live via your subscription to my Substack newsletter. But not to worry—if you can’t join us, the video will be available for replay in my newsletter archives afterward.

The date will be this Saturday, March 15, at 4pm GMT (UK), 5pm CET (Paris/Central Europe), noon (ET), and 9am (PT).

We’ll each be making a brunch-friendly recipe in our kitchen and chatting about cookbooks, the world of food, and more! I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Yotam for several years, and I’m thrilled to be able to chat with him Live and share the chat with you!

And today, I thought I’d also share a recipe from his book Simple with you…

Back in 2008, I was sent a copy of a new book from the UK. It was called Ottolenghi: The Cookbook, co-authored with Sami Tamimi, his business partner. As I turned the pages, I could tell this book was something special. The food was bursting off the pages: totally fresh and like nothing I’d seen in a cookbook before. I sensed that it was going to change the game.

I was so excited by the book that I told my New York editor at the time about it; “Oh, no…people in the U.S. don’t buy books from authors in England.”

I didn’t push it, but thought about Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Claudia Rodin, Diana Henry, and Nigel Slater, and even Gordon Ramsay, yet they passed on the book. 😳

Thankfully, my current publisher decided to publish the original Ottolenghi book, as well as all the subsequent ones that followed, which have become phenomenally successful, and influential, to a whole generation of cooks.

Each book that Yotam and Sami publish is a new adventure, and their team has grown to include other authors, chefs, recipe developers, and writers in their orbit. One thing that’s sometimes mentioned about their books, however, is the complexity of the recipes or the ingredient lists. Ottolenghi Simple is indeed devoted to simplicity, denoting in the book which recipes are:

S – short on time: less than 30 minutes
I – 10 ingredients or less
M – make ahead
P – pantry
L – lazy
E – easier than you think

We’re on the cusp of spring at the moment, and I’m anxiously anticipating the arrival of berries and stone fruits. Until then, I’m still making the most of citrus. But even in high season, i.e. summer, fresh blueberries are rare in Paris. Some of the natural food stores sell organic ones from Spain, which I scoop up, despite the price, so they are rather precious, and I use them wisely.

However, the frozen food shop that Parisians rely on for, well, a lot…Picard, has a good selection of frozen fruits and berries, including pitted sour cherries, figs, mangoes (for les smoothies), raspberries, and other mixed berries, since you don’t find local raspberries or blackberries in Paris. (What I wouldn’t give for a basket of boysenberries, mulberries, or tayberries!)

But I’m content with the other fresh fruits we get and have made peace with frozen berries, unless we’re traveling to regions in France where bushberries are grown locally. Then wow, are those good…

Speaking of what is and what isn’t available, I know many of you can’t get eggs right now. I tried to be a champ with this recipe and make the cake without eggs, digging into my stash of canned pumpkin puree, swapping out 3/4 cup of puree for the 3 large eggs.

The dark purple prunes I successfully used in that chocolate chip cookie recipe (above), I didn’t think would look very attractive in a lemon cake. But orange squash might work?

Or not. The flavor was interesting but the resulting crumb was too compact, although Romain and his brother loved it. It reminded them of their mother’s intentionally underbaked chocolate cake, but I suspect most of you wouldn’t have the same nostalgia or, er…appreciation for the dense texture.

Frozen berries do behave differently than fresh berries, and you want to use them frozen, not thawed, as they’ll release too much moisture if they’re defrosted in advance. The frozen wild blueberries I used seemed to want to exude a bunch of juice anyway. I guess no one told them that they’re not supposed to do that, or maybe that’s why they call them wild?

Anyhow, the cake ended up being a success. It had a bright lemon flavor, was studded with deeply flavored blueberries, and had a crackly lemon glaze to finish it off.

And yes, it also lived up to its “simple” name and was easy to make with ingredients I already had on hand, save for the blueberries. Back when I started writing cookbooks in 1999, almond flour was almost impossible to find, and I’d tell people to grind up (and give the quantities for) sliced almonds.

Nowadays, specialty shops, online retailers, well-stocked supermarkets, and stores like Trader Joe’s (in the U.S.) carry it, so it’s readily available these days. If you don’t have it, you can grind up 110g (slightly less than 4 ounces) sliced or slivered almonds, along with the all-purpose flour in a food processor or blender, until powdery. If the blades on your machine are really sharp, you could use whole almonds. You want to grind those as fine as possible, too.

Lemon Blueberry Cake

One 9-inch (23cm) loaf cake, 8 servings

Adapted from Ottolenghi Simple by Yotam Ottolenghi

If using frozen blueberries, keep them in the freezer until ready to use, which includes the berries you’ll be topping the cake with in step 6. Do not defrost them. If you don’t have ground almonds, you can grind up 110g (a bit less than 4 ounces) of sliced or slivered almonds along with the flour in a food processor or blender.

Note: In the edition of the book I have, there is no baking powder added however in the UK edition, there is. I did make it without the added leavening and it turned out fine. (I asked the Ottolenghi team about the omission in the U.S. version of the book and the testers in the U.S. found it didn’t make a difference, but I would use the 1/2 teaspoon baking powder noted in the recipe here.

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (150g) unsalted butter, cubed, at room temperature

1 cup (200g) granulated sugar

Zest of 1 lemon plus 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice (zest the lemon first, then juice it)

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

3 large eggs, at room temperature

2/3 cup (90g) all-purpose flour

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (110g) almond flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder, preferably aluminum-free

1/4 teaspoon salt

7 ounces (200g) blueberries, fresh or frozen

1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon (70g) powdered sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 400ºF (200ºC). Butter an 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch (21 x 11cm) loaf pan. Line the bottom with a rectangle of parchment paper.

2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or by hand, beat the butter, granulated sugar, lemon zest, and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice on high speed for 3-4 minutes, until light and fluffy.

3. Stop the mixer, scrape down the sides of the bowl, then add the vanilla and the eggs one at a time with the mixer on low speed, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. (At this point, the mixture will appear a bit curdled, which is normal.)

4. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, almond flour, baking powder, and salt, then add the dry ingredients to the batter in three additions, until well combined.

5. Using a flexible spatula, fold three-quarters of the blueberries into the batter. Avoid overworking the batter when folding since you don’t want to smash the batter — you just want to fold them in.

6. Scrape the mixture into the prepared cake pan, smooth the top, and bake for 15 minutes. Sprinkle the remaining blueberries evenly over the cake and bake another 15 minutes.

7. Cover the cake pan loosely with a sheet of aluminum foil and bake until the cake is baked in the middle. A toothpick inserted into the center should come out clean of yellow cake crumbs. My cake took about another 15 minutes until done (40-35 minutes total), but in the book, they say 25-30 minutes, so check for doneness with a toothpick rather than exact minutes.

8. Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then tilt it out of the loaf pan. Remove the parchment paper and let the cake cool completely on a wire rack.

9. To glaze the cake, in a small bowl mix together the powdered sugar with the remaining 1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice. Pour it over the cake and smooth it with a small icing spatula or the back of a spoon.

Lemon Blueberry Cake

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