no tea after 12

Last week, after making <a href="http://noteaafter12.com/blog/cobb_salad">this amazing buttermilk blue cheese dressing</a> I found myself with some leftover buttermilk and since Granny taught me (while scraping all the last bits of cake batter out of the bowl) that "one must always be frugal" I couldn't bear to let it go to waste. I also had these huge and lovely plump and juicy blueberries. I'm telling ya some of these suckers could've been mistaken for plums! They really deserved a nice cakey home and they received it in this gorgeously fresh and easy beyond belief cake. 

So, all you foodies out there know about Tessa Kiros right? Yes? Well, then you know that she writes the most beautiful cookbooks, every time I open them up I want to dive in and live inside them where I could eat well and be happy for all the rest of my days. This cake is from her book Apples for Jam...you probably know it, it has little red shoes on the front of it! Tell me, who could possibly resist a cookbook with shoes on the front! Well I couldn't anyway. The book is beautifully laid out featuring recipes from all the colours of the rainbow interjected with lovely little stories. A book written for her children, and to help parents cook with children, it is grown up but features such simple heartwarming food that it really is a triumph for all ages. With the dirty thirty looming very soon, I am decidedly not a child (despite acting like one more often than I would like to admit), and I have no children (yet...hi mom!) but I love this book all the same. Every time I cook something from one of her books I am reminded that I should be cooking from them more often...Tessa if you're out there you are one of my food heroines! 

I made a few adjustments to the recipe adding a bit of lemon juice and yogurt to bring even more lightness to it, and I baked it in a smaller pan than what was called for as I really wanted thick slices you had to really stretch to get your mouth around. I think you could probably even do this cake in several shapes and sizes, its so easily adaptable I might try it as a bundt cake next time. Tessa also mentions you could use any type of berry here as well, I think raspberries or blackberries would work beautifully but whatever you do make sure you are using fresh and not frozen as the latter would make this disappointingly mushy.