Last Updated on December 23, 2024 by Michelle

Looking for a delicious blueberry cake recipe? My grandmom’s is my favorite.

The older I get, the more I bake, and the more I experiment with grandmom’s cast iron recipes, the more I’m realizing that the secret to amazing baking is simply going back to the way Grandmom baked. And boy, let me tell you, grandmom gave the perfect name to my favorite of all of her recipes: Melt-in-Your-Mouth Blueberry Cake.

For me this week, part of going back to the way Grandmom baked included harvesting the fresh-picked blueberries myself. I was extra elated to spend my birthday morning doing just that.

Delay gratification

While there are a lot of things I love about living in New England, mountain hikes with majestic views and the rewards of wild blueberries is definitely on the top of my list. (This week’s hike overlooked a harbor of the beautiful Lake Winnipesauke. I wrote about Winnipesaukee, one of my favorite lakes, in this post.)

As I picked the tiny blue berries in the morning mountain breeze, I thought often of the delicious moist taste of the blueberry cake that I hadn’t had for almost a year. And I wondered how much of the secret to baked perfection is also in delayed gratification. That’s something we don’t know much about today when we buy a boxed cake on aisle 18 of the brightly lit grocery story–a box that proudly announces its contents are good for 4 more weeks because it’s loaded with unnatural ingredients and preservatives.

Savor the memories

Bent down among the tall, itchy grasses and short wild blueberry stalks, slowly adding one tiny berry after another to my pail, I was thankful that this cake was a long time in the making. I wondered how often previous generations associated food with one particular day and looked forward to that deliciousness for another 364 days.

The last time I had enjoyed Grandmom’s Blueberry Cake was on Mom’s birthday, last July. She loved the cake as much as I do, so we had made it for her numerous birthdays before. While I feel empty thinking about not being able to celebrate with either Mom or Dad again on this side of heaven, beautiful thoughts of Mom are one more sweet association I have with my favorite cake.

So as I feasted on the sun-warmed sweet berries, placing every third or fourth one that I picked in my pail for later, I decided that this year–today–I would make my own birthday cake. And it would be grandmom’s Melt-in-Your-Mouth Blueberry Cake, mom’s favorite and my own.

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Enjoy the secrets

So maybe all three things add up to the secret to the perfect Blueberry Cake…

Harken back to the way Grandmom baked, consider baking your cake in a cast iron pan like this one.

Delay the gratification a little, and take time to make the deliciousness just right. Really cream the ingredients well, instead of plopping it together, and carefully coat the tender berries in flour before adding them to the batter.

Enjoy all the memories your family has associated with the cake through the years. Each memory makes it just a little sweeter.

Regardless of what the secrets are that lead to this deliciously amazing blueberry cake, I promise you, you’ll be glad you made it.

And after you enjoy this amazing Blueberry Cake in cast iron, you’ll want to try this cookie, which may wind up being the best thing you’ve ever baked in cast iron.

If you’d like to substitute maple syrup for sugar in any recipe, I gotcha covered.

Want general tips for baking with maple syrup in your recipes? Yep, I gotcha covered on that one too.

Want to own the book on a maple-infused kitchen? You might want a copy of my book, Sweet Maple.

Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom. Psalm 90:12

Print Recipe

Melt-in-your-mouth blueberry cake

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs separated
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar (plus 1/4 cup white and brown sugar, mixed together, for topping)
1/3 cup milk
1 tsp lemon juice
1/2 cup blueberries (lightly flour the blueberries)

Instructions

Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together 3 times.
Beat egg whites until stiff and set aside.
Cream butter.
Mix sugar into butter.
Add egg yolks to the butter and sugar, beating well.
Add in dry ingredients, alternating with the milk.
Fold in egg whites, lemon juice, and the floured blueberries.
After scooping batter into a greased 10" cast iron pan, sprinkle top of batter with a 1/4 cup of mixed white and brown sugar.
Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.

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For this recipe I love using my grandmom’s cast iron pan. Hers is an old, unusual size that I haven’t found anywhere. It’s labeled “10 5/8.” But a 10″ cast iron pan would work very well.