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Lemon and Cornmeal Blueberry Farm Loaf

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I closed most of my garden yesterday…it was a sad day 🙁
So, I thought I would make something with blueberries…to cheer me up, fill my belly with warm cake and help me look forward to another batch of wild blueberries coming our way next summer.
Yes, it won’t be for another year, but, what the heck…there is always an excuse for warm cake!  The crunch of the cornmeal really compliments the cake and the blueberries add a dimension of sweet to the bitter freshness of the lemon.  This freezes well and is a nice cake to eat as a snack, for breakfast or even to serve to company.
I made 2 cakes…one following the directions below and another adding a handful of sliced apples.Ingredients:
1 3/4 c buttermilk *see note
1 1/2 c sugar
1/2 c applesauce
1/2 c vegetable oil (or you can omit the applesauce and use 1 c oil…I’m just trying to save your waistline)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
grated rind of one lemon
3 c flour
1/2 c cornmeal
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 c frozen blueberries
Glaze (optional…but yummy):
Juice of one lemon
2-4 tbsp icing sugar (depending on how much juice you get from your lemon)Note:
If you don’t have buttermilk, you can use 3 tbsp vinegar in a 2 cup measure and fill it with enough milk to measure 1 3/4 c.  Let it sit for 10 minutes in order for the mixture to thicken or curdle.
Or, if you have some yogurt hanging around, just use that but thin it down a bit with milk depending on what kind of yogurt you have (I had greek yogurt which is quite thick so I used 1 c yogurt and 3/4 c milk)

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1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Spray a 9×13″ pan with cooking spray.
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2.  In a bowl, whisk together buttermilk, sugar, applesauce, oil, eggs, zest and vanilla.  In a separate bowl, mix together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt and baking soda.
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3.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix just to combine…remember, over mixing makes your cake tough.
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4.  Fold in blueberries and pour into your prepared pan.
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5.  Bake for 40-50 minutes.
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6.  When you pull the cake out of the oven, poke holes randomly over the cake with a fork while it’s warm.
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7.  Put the lemon juice in a bowl through a sieve to catch any seeds.  Add icing sugar to make it pourable (if you add too much sugar and it gets too thick, just thin it out with a touch of milk).
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8.  Pour it over the cake through the sieve again (just to make sure you catch anything else!) and the warmth of the cake will soak it up
Notice the apples in this one!
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9.  Serve it as a snack cake or plate it on a bed of blueberry sauce (blueberries in a pot with a few tbsp of sugar and a few tbsp of water…cook it down and spread over the bottom of the plate before placing the cake on top).
Give it a sprinkle of icing sugar and serve it up.  As a friend of mine said after trying this, “winner, winner, chicken dinner”!!
I think that means he liked it…:)