Tag Archives: blackberries

Blackberry and Lemon Stripe Cake and Happy Birthdays

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Each year, my birthday gift to myself is to spend the day creating an elaborate, multi-step cake. In 2019 it was this showstopper, in 2018 I spent all day creating this stunner, in 2017 I baked this beauty and in 2016, this was my featured cake.

Baking is my happy place and I love to challenge myself with advanced techniques to create something I have never done before. This vertical stripe cake has been on my list of “must bake” for quite a while now. Cutting into a cake and revealing vertical layers of cake and icing, instead of the usual horizontal, is such an unexpected delight and surprise. There are so few good surprises left in life anymore.

This cake is inspired by the Lemon and Blackcurrant Stripe Cake in Sweet. I could not find black currants, so I used blackberries instead. The berries are used to make a sauce to flavour the buttercream. In the original recipe, they used some of the sauce to create a “drip cake”, but I have never been successful in getting the sauce to drip artistically down the sides. I always make a bloody mess. I decided to just top it with some berries and flowers and use the extra sauce to serve on the side.

The batter for the cake is a light lemon sponge. It’s baked in a jellyroll pan.

Once the cake is baked, let it cool for 5 minutes. Then dust with icing sugar, and cover with a clean towel. Flip the whole thing over, peel off the baking sheet and parchment paper and roll up the warm cake in the towel.

This step “trains” the cake to roll up later without cracking. Once cooled, unroll and cut into three long rectangles.

Spread each rectangle with some of the buttercream. The original recipe called for a French buttercream. This type of buttercream uses egg yolks. I find it a bit too rich for this cake, so I went with a Swiss Meringue Buttercream, which uses just the egg whites.

The three strips of cake are rolled up into one wide barrel. Stand it on its end and you have a vertical stripe cake. You can see in the photo below, where the strips have been joined. Then cover the entire cake in more buttercream.

I created a simple decoration of flowers and blackberries.

Click here to print recipe for Blackberry-and-Lemon-Stripe-CakeDownload

Blackberry Meringue Tarts

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If you are looking for a baking project, and take great pleasure in creating beauty, these tarts are for you. If you just want a quick sugar rush, this is not the recipe for you. These blackberry meringue tarts were inspired by Anna Olsen. She created something similar on her show Bake with Anna.

There are three component parts of the recipe. The blackberry jam, the pastry and the meringue. Feel free to split the work over two days if you like, making the jam and tart shells on day one and filling and topping with meringue on day two.

The tart shells are totally baked before filling with the jam. Make sure they are golden brown and the bottom crust is not too blonde. Once the shells are cooled, brush them with a little melted white chocolate. This provides a barrier so that the jam does not make the pastry soggy. Plus, the sweet white chocolate is a fantastic flavour partner for the tart blackberry jam. I add a bit of rice wine vinegar to my jam to prevent it from becoming too sweet, a tip I learned from Jake Cohen.

The meringue I suggest for this recipe is a Swiss meringue. While a French meringue is simpler to make (see this article for a detailed description on the different kinds of meringue), it is not as stable as a Swiss meringue and you won’t be able to achieve the fine definition of those gorgeous piped stars.

Feel free to leave the meringue snowy white, or use a mini culinary torch, if you have one, to burnish the meringue. You could also just pop it under the broiler for a minute or two.

Click here to print recipe for Blackberry-Meringue-TartsDownload

Ombré Blackberry Cake

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This month my blog turns 10 years old!I fell into blogging purely by accident. Check out my very first post,  if you’re curious about how it all got started.

Blogging consistently, once a week, for 10 years, takes a certain level of committment and discipline. I have always been a fairly disciplined person, so consistency came fairly easily to me. But I think that the reason I have stayed with this for so long, is that this creative process continued to excite and challenge me. I found myself curious to learn and become more skilled in all the disciplines that food blogging involves. Plus, I love having an excuse to buy lots of beautiful dishes and other props.

One of the nicest, but unexpected, things that happened was the loyal following that I developed. I am so grateful for you guys! I love hearing from you, telling me what worked and what didn’t. You keep me honest and let me know when I screw up or make typos in the recipe. It’s like having an editor for free! I get so excited when you tell me that you had guests for dinner and everything you made was from saltandserenity! It’s like virtually attending your dinner parties. (And if you know me, I always prefer to be a virtual guest!)

If you think about it, food bloggers are essentially doing the job of 4 different professionals – cook/baker, food stylist, photographer, and recipe writer. I have always been a very slow and methodical learner and have made many blunders along the way. But, as my sister Jody is fond of saying, “mistakes are how we learn.” It was almost a year before I figured out that taking photos in my kitchen, with the overhead lights on, was causing a horrible yellow cast on all my images. Some of us learn more quickly than others!

To celebrate 10 years of blogging, I wanted to bake a beautiful statuesque cake. I started with the classic white layer cake from “The Perfect Cake” cookbook by America’s Test Kitchen. This book is a wonderful resource, whether you’re a novice or have been baking for years. This cake is the perfect backdrop for so many different flavours. It has a soft fine crumb and bakes up tall and light. I was envisioning an ombre cake, with shades of pink and purple. My first attempt looked like a bad bridesmaid’s dress. I used gel food colouring and the shades looked so artificial.

I decided to go the natural route and use blackberries to tint my buttercream. I mashed up some blackberries and cooked them with a bit of sugar and lemon juice. Then I strained the seeds and used the purée to colour my buttercream. But you need to be careful adding liquid to buttercream. Too much and the buttercream becomes too soft. I wasn’t able to get that vibrant blackberry colour or flavour I had in mind.

And then I remembered the freeze dried strawberries I used to glaze my Citrus and Brown Butter Shortbread Cookies. I sourced some freeze dried blackberries online,  and ground them up into a powder to add more blackberry flavour and colour. Perfection!

Click here to print recipe for Ombré Blackberry CakeDownload