Blueberry in winter: the ultimate comfort food

I've been reading this guy Adam’s food blog (the Amateur Gourmet ) for a while now and I really like it. Maybe I can relate to him because he's just an average guy trying to cook average things. Or maybe it was his humor and charming self-deprecation. Unlike some other food blogs that make you feel inferior because it seems that everything they make turns out perfect, I always get a sense of camaraderie when I read his blog.

So anyway, I saw this blueberry apple kuchen that he posted, and was instantly drawn by the perfect geometry of it. I begged, among other equally shameless recipe seekers, for the recipe (from French Laundry)
and Adam obliged (see comment section).

The recipe is actually for either blueberry or cranberry, but Nissin's cranberries were looking wrinkled and sickly so I decided to splurge and bought myself a teeny tiny container of blueberries for you don't want to know how much.

I followed Adam's pictures in arranging the apples in a spoke-pattern in my brand-new silicone cake pan . But alas, either Japanese apples are too big or I didn't slice them thin enough, I didn't have space in between the spokes to insert my blueberries like Adam did so neatly. Also, my batter is a bit runny (must be the low glutinous nature of the Japanese flour) so I had a hard time making the apple slices stand up vertically, but I made do.



The final dusting of cinnamon sugar is very important as the sugar caramelizes during the baking process, giving the cake a nice crusty shell. The best part I like about this particular cake is where the cake batter SQUEEZES itself in between the apple slices and BURSTS into little slices of crunchy heaven above the cake top. Remember that Seinfeld episode with Elaine's obssesion of muffin tops? This is the muffin top part of the cake!



Thanks to Adam for sharing a great recipe!