A Very Good Cake Recipe with Fruit

One of my all-time favorite easy dessert recipes was given to me by Darrell Lund, Darien’s superintendent of schools, when I was serving on the school board. “A Very Good Cake Recipe with Fruit” is one of the easiest cake recipes imaginable. The most time-consuming part is pushing the fruit into the batter. This makes a quick and easy dessert for guests, and the cake is delicious. These are Darrell’s instructions:

Here is a simple but very good cake recipe in which you can use virtually any kind or combination of fresh fruit.
3/4 cup sugar
8 tbsp. butter or substitute
1 cup flour
1 tsp. baking powder
pinch of salt
2 eggs or equivalent (eggbeaters, etc.)
1/4 cup mixed sugar and cinnamon (I use a crystallized brown sugar for added texture)

1. Butter a 9" spring form pan
2. Cream butter and sugar
3. Add flour, baking powder, salt and eggs and process thoroughly
4. Spread dough in spring form pan
5. Add fruit
6. Sprinkle with mixture of sugar and cinnamon
7. Bake in 350 degree oven for 60 minutes (I place cake in lower shelf of oven)

Be very generous in your use of fruit. Press them into dough (which is quite soft). Fresh raspberries are particularly good, as are blueberries. You really can use virtually any fruit, including those from cans or jars when not available fresh. It tastes lightest and best when eaten about 30-45 minutes out of the oven.

Lemon Verbena Ice Cream
I have lots of lemon verbena right now, so I decided it would be good in ice cream, paired with the cake. It was unusual, delicious, and the perfect accompaniment for Darrell’s cake.

Ingredients
1 cup loosely-packed fresh lemon verbena leaves, rinsed & dried
1/2 cup milk
2 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup sugar
pinch of salt
6 large egg yolks
optional: a dried leaf of lemon verbana, to crumble in the just-churned ice cream, or a very-finely chopped fresh leaf

1. In a saucepan, warm the lemon verbena leaves with the milk, cream, sugar, and a pinch of salt. Once warm, remove from heat, cover, and let steep for one hour.

2. Use a strainer or slotted spoon to skim the lemon verbena from the cream & milk mixture and squeeze the leaves to extract as much liquid as possible back into the saucepan.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs together in a small bowl and slowly pour in the warm cream mix, whisking constantly. Pour the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan and cook, stirring continuously with a heatproof spatula, until the custard leaves a trail on the spatula when you drag your finger across it. Immediately strain the custard into a bowl. Stir until cool.

4. Chill thoroughly, and then freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. When done, crumble a dried verbena leaf in the ice cream, or finely-chop a fresh leaf and stir that in.