Blogging the NY Times Magazine: On Blueberries (and Freezing a Cake Pan?)

In the Sunday Magazine, food writer Nancy Harmon Jenkins gives a short, insightful look at wild Maine blueberries, plus a couple of great-looking recipes. But what we kept re-reading was a tiny detail in the recipe for the blueberry cake...

The first step in the recipe, which includes a delicious-sounding mix of blueberries, yogurt, orange zest, and ground almonds, includes instructions for greasing and flouring a cake pan. Easy enough. Then it reads, "Set the pan in the freezer." Huh?

There's no explanation, and we're not familiar with this technique. Maybe it hardens the butter used to grease the pan, so that it creates a more distinct buffer layer to keep the cake from sticking? Is there something about a frozen pan going into a hot oven that affects the cake's consistency?

There's also a note at the end, which explains that when using frozen Maine blueberries, you shouldn't allow them to thaw before adding them to the batter. Hmm. Maybe the two things are related.

Does anyone have any ideas about the frozen cake pan? Do you do this at home?

Read the entire article:

The Way We Eat: On Blueberry Hill

Get the recipes:

(Images: Erica Beth Silberstein and Tony Cenicola for The New York Times)

Comments (4)

I don't know about the pan. However, a lot of good blueberry recipes will recommend frozen fruit. It has better flavor b/c it's picked ripe and flash frozen almost immediately. Once it's frozen, fruit loses some of it's structural integrity. It'll turn into mush when it's thawed. The skin on blueberries will not be as strong and if you let them thaw before mixing it in your batter then the juices inside will seep out and turn your batter purple. Mix them in frozen and you advert this problem. It's also good to toss them in a tbsp of flour before adding them, so they don't sink to the bottom.

I love eating frozen blueberries and I think they test better than fresh. all summer long every time I go to sam's club I have purchased the big container of blueberries--washed and dried them and then frozen them in individual servings. my goal, if I don't eat them all in the next few weeks, is to have them year round. they haven't turned to mush on me yet, but I also haven't let them completely defrost.

I've made a couple recipes that have called for freezing the pan; most recently for madelienes. I'm not sure why they ask for this extra step... perhaps so the batter in contact with the pan won't brown as fast?

I believe this helps the cake cook evenly, so that the edges don't cook more quickly than the center. Freezing the pan probably has a similar effect to putting a wet towel around the pan while baking, which creates nice even layers for a cake in my experience.