Fridays and Blackberry cake

Fridays are the best days. Fridays are the end of Neil's work week (usually). Fridays are when Gwen gets home. Fridays are chocolate doughnut day. Fridays are stay up late and have a cocktail with my husband. And Fridays lead to Saturdays. And this Saturday is Neil's birthday.

We don't have a plan really. We decided a year or two ago that when it comes to holidays that involve presents that we prefer to just get things for the children and skip ourselves. That's not to say we don't celebrate or get one another things from time to time, just not specifically for the holiday. It makes everything a lot less stressful and allows more time for my favorite part of any celebration; family and food! And since tomorrow is Neil's birthday I hope we can do all the things he loves to do (and maybe go berry picking since I will have a few more hands to help)

But before we get to cake we should get back to doughnuts! The town we live in has a local doughnut shop and on Fridays and only Fridays they make devils food cake doughnuts. I try to take the girls walking as many mornings during the week as I am able, but we always seem to make it out on Fridays. Kiki recognizes the building long before we get there and starts getting antsy in her stroller, after a short but sometimes long wait in line and 85 cents we have our only on Fridays chocolate cake doughnut (Kiki gets slightly less than half.

Behind the Doughnut shop is a large wooden playground. Kiki loves the playground probably more then the doughnut. The whole trip usually takes the better part of the morning getting us home at the right time for lunch and an afternoon nap. Giving me a chance to catch up on the chores and hopefully bake a fun snack for the afternoon, recently with lots and lots of blackberries!

We have gone to pick berries a few times now. Kiki loves it. She comes running over to me shouting 'I HIKE' which really just means she wants to walk some where and not be in her stroller. So we do. We hike. Usually not to far and these past few times just over to the berry patch its an acre or two of nothing but blackberries and its perfect. With our first batch Kiki and I made a blackberry pie as a surprise for daddy, turned out a little less then alright. But with the rest we just added some sugar mashed them up and let them sit for a day or so and ended up making a blackberry cake.

Before I was pregnant I never liked cake. Every birthday I had since being a little girl I've always had pie. I would call cake too dry, or the frosting too sweet or just claim there was something wrong with cake in general. About half way through my first pregnancy though, all that changed, and I find myself trying out different cake recipes more often than not theses days. And my favorites right now are slightly heavier single layer cakes. There was a wonderful lemon polenta cake on Juls' kitchen that I have made more than a few times. But this time we made a blackberry dark chocolate cake which suited everyone just fine!

Blackberry cake

To start out we used:

2ish cups of flour
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup oil
1tsp baking powder
1tsp vanilla
1tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
2ish cups of berries that sat in sugar to let out their juices.
dark chocolate chips and some whole berries for making things look nice.

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees

First sift together flour, baking powder, and cinnamon and set off to the side (This is the bowl I usually let Kiki stir while I am getting together the other ingredients)
Whip together eggs and sugar. Once that has got a bit fluffy add the vanilla then slowly add the oil  till its all mixed well. Add to that the sifted flour and stir till combined ( it should be rather thick). lastly pour in the berries and all the juices and mix everything together.

Make sure your 10 inch cake pan is greased and pour in the batter.

Bake at 350 degrees for around 45 minutes. Remove and let cool before taking the cake from the mold.

We used melted chocolate, powdered sugar, and whole berries to decorate the top of ours!




Well this is good-bye for the weekend. Hopefully tomorrow will find us at the river for the afternoon with bellies full of tamales in celebration of my wonderful husband's 43rd birthday!