Marbled Blueberry Lemon Bundt Cake

One of the best things about living on the east coast is the plethora of pick-your-on farms.  After a super successful strawberry picking excursion when my little sister joined me for a week of baking, I couldn’t wait for blueberry season.

Picking them was not quite as fun as I imagined – recently cut grass and an afternoon rainstorm dampened the experience – but didn’t make this cake taste any less delicious.

Blueberries and lemons are made to go together; they are the perfect marriage of sweet and tart. This cake is proof of this.

Thanks to Cooks Illustrated, my favorite cooking magazine, the blueberries are marbled throughout, as opposed to the typical exploded blueberry clumps you typically find in cakes or muffins.  The use of fruit pectin, helps hold together the filling and allows it to be spread around the cake. This means you get a bite of blueberry and lemon in each bite. I’ve only slightly amended their recipe by subbing in apple sauce for 1/3 of the butter (I swear it still tastes amazing) and doubling the lemon zest (I’m serious about this blueberry lemon pairing).

For an extra lemony bite, you can whip up an easy glaze to drizzle over the cake – not necessary, but definitely delicious.  After I ate 1 slice of cake, I was bullied into adding this glaze (by someone with a serious sweet tooth).

Blueberry Chocolate Chunk Frozen Yogurt

At Rosh Hashanah, my favorite part of the holiday is Tashlich, where we take bread and cast it into water, reciting things we want to leave behind from the previous year.  In this way, we are ready to take on the new year with a clean slate.  Although New Years Eve comes and goes, with exciting parties or not, the new year forges ahead and we think of what we will change and make promises to ourselves about the months ahead.  It is important when making our “new years resolutions” that we allow ourselves a clean slate – letting go and forgiving ourselves for things of the past, so we can fully enjoy the splendor of the new year.

For me, new years resolutions must be simple and attainable.  Making short term goals allows me to find success sooner, which often buoys me to continue in my pursuits throughout the year.  So with no regrets from last year (no should haves or could haves), here are two of my goals for the remainder of January:

• post at least twice a week here
• make a dent in my pantry and freezer

Luckily, these are two very compatible goals.  The first fruits of this are this incredible frozen yogurt; it’s tangy and bursting with juicy blueberries and dark chocolate chunks. It’s made completely from items in my fridge, freezer, and pantry and, with under 8 ingredients, practically no fat, and no refined sugar, it’s sure to meet someone else’s new years resolution. (It also allowed me to use my ice cream maker that had been gathering dust. Another possible resolution for the year: breakout all my fancy cookware?)