Ever have one of those days where you just are feelin’ “mehh­h­h­hhh” and just want to bur­row back into the pil­lows and head back to dream­land?  Well, that was me today.  Between the travel, con­stantly ref­er­ee­ing the fur­balls, the inces­santly ever grow­ing to-do list and lots of other things that are snap­pin’ at my stilet­tos, I just wanted to pull the cov­ers over my head and hide.

How­ever, I knew that I had plans to attempt bak­ing in stilet­tos again – this time with the Bare­foot Contessa’s Blue­berry Crumb Cake.  I had left out the ingre­di­ents overnight to let them come to “room tem­per­a­ture” because my last bak­ing exper­i­ment didn’t go so well.  I had some gor­geous blue­ber­ries that I picked up from the store and decided to enjoy my after­noon with some baking.

First of all, if I ran a bed and break­fast, you can rest assured that I would serve this reg­u­larly.  Not only was it a recipe that was easy enough for this gal, but it came together per­fectly.  My only error was of the clumsy fac­tor.  I had a small saucepan with the melted but­ter cool­ing and, like from a com­edy film, I acci­dently spilled the warm melted but­ter ALL. OVER. THE. FLOOR.  Well, the pug, who is still nurs­ing a sprained right back leg acted like he was a pup and came bar­rel­ing over, tongue out­stretched and the neigh­bors could only hear my scream of “NO WIGGY!  Leave the but­ter ALONE!  You are NOT Paula Deen!”  It was a los­ing bat­tle, I tell you.   I think I was more wor­ried that he would slip yet again and hurt his leg even more than him lick­ing up the rem­nants of the spilled butter.

If you want to sur­prise your fam­ily or just be nice to co-workers, make this – and thank me later.  Just watch out for the but­ter (and a pug wear­ing a Paula Deen wig).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Bare­foot Contessa’s Blue­berry Crumb Cake

Recipe cour­tesy of The Bare­foot Con­tessa, Ina Garten

Ingre­di­ents

For the streusel:

• 1/4 cup gran­u­lated sugar
• 1/3 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
• 1 tea­spoon ground cinnamon
• 1/8 tea­spoon ground nutmeg
• 1/4 pound (1 stick) unsalted but­ter, melted
• 1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

For the cake:

• 6 table­spoons unsalted but­ter, at room tem­per­a­ture (3/4 stick)
• 3/4 cup gran­u­lated sugar
• 2 extra-large eggs, at room tem­per­a­ture (Note – I used Large Eggs and it turned out fine.  Please don’t tell Ina! )
• 1 tea­spoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 tea­spoon grated lemon zest
• 2/3 cup sour cream
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tea­spoon bak­ing powder
• 1/4 tea­spoon bak­ing soda
• 1/2 tea­spoon kosher salt
• 1 cup fresh blueberries
• Con­fec­tion­ers’ sugar for sprinkling

Direc­tions

Pre­heat the oven to 350 degrees F. But­ter and flour a 9-inch round bak­ing pan.

For the streusel:

1. Com­bine the gran­u­lated sugar, brown sugar, cin­na­mon, and nut­meg in a bowl.
2. Stir in the melted but­ter and then the flour. Mix well and set aside.

For the cake:

1. Cream the but­ter and sugar in the bowl of an elec­tric mixer fit­ted with the pad­dle attach­ment on high speed for 4 to 5 min­utes, until light and fluffy.
2. Reduce mixer speed to low and add the eggs 1 at a time.  Mix.
3. Add the the vanilla, lemon zest, and sour cream.
4. In a sep­a­rate bowl, sift together the flour, bak­ing pow­der, bak­ing soda, and salt.
5. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mix­ture to the bat­ter until just combined.
6. Fold in the blue­ber­ries and stir with a spat­ula to be sure the bat­ter is com­pletely mixed.
7. Spoon the bat­ter into the pre­pared pan and spread it out with a knife.
8. With your fin­gers, crum­ble the top­ping evenly over the batter.
9. Bake for 40 to 50 min­utes, until a cake tester comes out clean.
10. Cool com­pletely and serve sprin­kled with con­fec­tion­ers’ sugar.

Gather The Ingredients

Don’t For­get to But­ter & Flour the pan – it’s crucial!

Mak­ing the Streusel – with but­ter batch #2

Lemons + Blue­ber­ries = Heaven

Sift­ing – another cru­cial step.

Ahhh – a bat­ter that is good enough to eat

Fresh out of the oven and dusted with sugar

Now, all I need is some cof­fee – delish!