Pooja Dodeja started her career in fashion, designing intricate Indian outfits. Within a few years of working the gruesome hours in fashion, Pooja felt her destiny calling elsewhere. She found her calling in the kitchen, baking scrumptious cakes and using her designing eye and senses for beautiful creations. She now bakes anything and everything sweet, professionally on order. (Psst… ask for her brownies!)
Today she is sharing her gorgeous lemon blueberry loaf cake, which is incredibly simple to make from scratch, along with a few cheat tips!
Read more about this beautiful young lady below.
10 Questions with Pooja
Day Job: an ex- fashion designer, now full time baker
Lives in: Mumbai
In the kitchen, I couldn’t live without: Pure Vanilla
Current food obsession: Japanese Cheesecake
If I could cook for anyone: Heston Blumenthal
A traditional family dinner is: A hearty Sindhi meal
Go-to comfort food: Dark Chocolate
Would love to travel to: Japan and Paris
Currently reading: The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum
My motto: “Do the best you can until you know better, then when you know better, do better.” Maya Angelou
Pooja’s recipe for Bamboozled Lemon Blueberry Loaf Cake
A homemade, home baked and hand crafted cake is awlays the perfect way to make any occasion special. Loaf cakes are the perfect, fuss free, easy to bake cakes. They require little to no frosting and can be presented at any time of the day. This completely bamboozled, a.k.a. cheats lemon blueberry loaf cake, get its name for two reason – for starters, it’s literally very easy. Believe me when I say, this is a one-bowl recipe and can be mixed under 2 minutes. Yup, you read that right, under 2 minutes. And two, well there are no fresh blueberries in it. So no need to wait for the right season or the right price or the need run to the market for blueberries. This cake looks pretty, tastes even better and is super easy. So go on ahead and give it a try.
Serves: 6 | Prep Time: 15 mins | Cook Time: 45 mins
Ingredients
½ cup very soft unsalted butter
½ cup caster sugar
¾ cup + 1 tablespoon all purpose flour
2 large room temperature eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon lemon juice
½ teaspoon lemon zest(optional)
¼ tsp vanilla extract.
Blueberry filling/compote/jam/ preserve – 3-5 tablespoons.
Frosting
5 tablespoons icing sugar, sifted
1-2 teaspoons lemon juice
Method
Heat oven to 180°C
Grease and line the base of a loaf tin (7” x 4” / 450g) with parchment paper.
Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl
Now add the very soft butter and eggs to the bowl.
Beat this mixture for 1 minute starting from low to medium with your electric hand beater.
Stop at 30 seconds to scrape the bottom of the bowl with a spatula and continue to beat for another 30 seconds, after which point there would be no lumps or clusters of flour remaining.
Scrape the sides of the bowl and add the vanilla and lemon juice and beat for another 30 seconds on medium speed. Do not overwork the batter.
Give it one last mix with the spatula and pour half the batter in the prepared loaf tin.
With a teaspoon put a few dollops of the blueberry filling on the top of the batter and swirl it with a skewer or a toothpick.
Pour the other half of the batter on top of this and repeat the process.
Bake for 35-45 minutes.
Cake is ready when it is springy to touch and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean or with very few moist crumbs.
Cool cake in tin for 10 minutes and turn it out on a wire rack to cool further.
Frosting:
Add ½ tsp of lemon juice at a time to the sifted icing sugar to get a dripping consistency, and mix well, until no lumps remain.
This frosting is very forgiving and can be adapted to a sweet or a tarter lemon flavour, depending on personal preference by adding more/less lemon juice.
With a spoon drizzle the frosting on the cake, after it has been cooled for 5 minutes or drizzle it just before serving.
Connect with Pooja, Sugarfall at:
Facebook: Sugarfall Mumbai | Instagram: @sugarfall_mumbai | Twitter: @sugarfallmumbai | Snapchat: Sugarfall.mumbai
Photo credits: Nikita Bhasin
Instagram: @nikibhasin | Twitter: @nikibhasin
