French Blueberry/Black Raspberry Cake

The June 19th recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie is French Strawberry Cake from the book Baking with Julia.

Learn more about Tuesdays with Dorie and see links to the blogs of my fellow bakers.  Also the hosts will have the recipe on their blog!

I had this cake baked and served on Father's Day, but never got around to posting on Tuesday... my bad!


I had just went blueberry and black raspberry picking, so I made a French Blueberry/Blackberry cake instead.

The génoise was challenging for me.  The first one I made was about as flat as a pancake.  Forget cutting it in half much less in thirds!  So I tried again, and my second attempt was much better, enough that I could cut it in half.  Therefore, my three layers were actually two cakes and thus the finished product was very heavy.  But practice makes perfect, and I think a génoise will be a great cake for me once I perfect my technique.

But it tasted good and looked pretty.

Non-Naan

The May 15th recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie is Oasis Naan from the book Baking with Julia.

Learn more about Tuesdays with Dorie and see links to the blogs of my fellow bakers.  Also the hosts will have the recipe on their blog!

This Naan was tasty and easy!  However, my half-Indian husband looked at my naan, took and bite, and said "This is good, but isn't naan."  I valiantly tried to defend the naan-ish bread, "This is Julia Child naan, it is white person naan!" (I call all the Indian food I make white-person-Indian-food, because well, I'm a white person making Indian food.  That way I can defend my attempts at Indian-European fusion (or failed attempts at traditional Indian) when he points out it's not like what he grew up with.  Because it isn't SUPPOSED to be!)

Took the naan to a party, and the other guests agreed with my husband.  I still got great satisfaction out of eating this bread and it was crazy easy.  The early ones did end up a little overly puffy (another non-naan characteristic my husband pointed out) so I went a little crazy with the fork poking holes in the later breads and that seemed to work better.  I have a pretty well-stocked kitchen, but I do not own a baking stone or a pizza peel and they would have been very useful for this recipe.