The perfect melt-in-your-mouth blueberry cake baked in cast iron

Last Updated on August 5, 2024 by Michelle

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 try this cake with a less refined sugar and more all-natural goodness, snag the version made with all-natural maple syrup instead of refined sugar— over in my subscriber library.

Download a conversion chart to help you easily swap out maple syrup for refined sugar right here.

And get the details on baking with maple syrup in this article right here.

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

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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 like this one would work very well:

These are the three sizes/styles of cast iron pans that I’ve found work best for baking cookies, like my favorite chocolate chip recipe. And I’ve tried a LOT of cast iron pans, from heirloom to new, from tiny to huge, from griddles to skillets. I mean someone had to do the difficultly delicious research. 🙂 You can trust me when I say these three styles/sizes of cast iron pans make the world’s best cookies:

Other cast iron products I love:

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As soon as you subscribe, you’ll have immediate access to my subscriber library of resources, which includes my maple blueberry cake and another one of my favorites of grandmom’s recipes–her Cheesy Egg Souffle recipe. It’s extra easy peasy and trust me this souffle is one of my favorite go-to recipes ever.

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