Blueberry Buttermilk Cake & Chocolate Honey Ganache

This week has been all about inspiration, impatience and cake. I have been lacking inspiration in the baking department. You know I love to bake up something wacky and cute, but I hate to force myself to think of something when I am just not in the mood. It never results in anything as fun as the ideas that come naturally and unexpectedly. So I took my foot off the baking pedal for a few days. Then I decided I need to make a cake. I've had an intense craving for a simple, lovely cake. As Karen rightly mentioned, life should have more afternoon teas and more cake.

And I've been very impatient this week. I am impatient to get home from work every night, and so eager to begin my holiday which is less than two weeks away. And I was too impatient to wait for my Milk Chocolate Honey Ganache to cool before I slathered it all over this beautiful Blueberry Buttermilk Cake. It looks a little thin here, but after I took these photos I poured on another layer of ganache and it was perfection.

The buttermilk cake is based off a great picnic cake recipe from Gourmet Traveller. It's a lovely tea cake, with a nice crumb and so amazingly moist (Hi Suze!). I didn't realise that the original recipe gave you a batter that makes about 3 standard cakes, so I had to split it up and make several different cakes. But my favourite was the bundt cake, if only because it had the hole in the centre which acted like a perfect little bowl to catch all that ganache. Because in the end, the star of this cake is the ganache. (I've adjusted the quantities listed below so that it will hopefully make the right amount of batter for the cake pictured)

I used some Lindt milk chocolate rather than my usual dark chocolate, I loved the colour it gave the ganache - it almost looked like caramel. The milk chocolate and honey combination was lovely and surprisingly not too sweet. Feel free to swap it for a semi-sweet chocolate if you're a fan of the darker chocolates, but I like that the milk chocolate is a little different.

I had to use blueberries for this cake. There's a ridiculous amount of them around Sydney at the moment and I couldn't resist stocking up on fresh punnets. But for those who aren't lucky enough to have them around, the frozen ones are fine for the batter. But it was great having lots of fresh ones over the top of the cake, and they are so purdy ;)

Blueberry Buttermilk Cake with Milk Chocolate Honey Ganache
(adapted from this Gourmet Traveller recipe, makes one bundt cake or two small round cakes)
165g softened butter
200 g (nearly 1 cup) caster sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla bean paste or 1/2 scraped vanilla bean pod
Finely grated rind of 1 lemon
200g plain flour, sieved
100 gm (2/3 cup) self-raising flour, sieved
1/3 tsp bicarbonate of soda, sieved
A pinch of salt
230 ml (nearly one cup) buttermilk
125g (1 punnet, approx 1 cup) blueberries, fresh or frozen (and thawed)

200ml pouring cream
200g milk chocolate, broken into smaller pieces
6 tbsp honey
Optional: fresh blueberries to decorate

Preheat oven to 160C and butter a bundt tin (I used a 20cm diameter pan with high sides, if using a smaller tin you may need two tins or halve the quantity of batter). Beat butter and sugar in an electric mixer until creamy. Add eggs one at a time, then add vanilla seeds and lemon rind. Meanwhile, sieve flours and bicarbonate of soda into a bowl with a pinch of salt. With mixer on low speed, add half the flour mixture, then half the buttermilk. Repeat, then spoon mixture into cake tin. Smooth top, then bake until cake is golden and an inserted skewer withdraws clean (45-50 minutes, less if using a flatter pan). Cool in tin for 10 minutes, then invert onto a rack and cool completely.

Prepare the chocolate honey ganache; place cream and honey in a small saucepan on medium heat. Bring just to the boil and then take off the heat and add chocolate to hot mixture. Leave for a minute to allow chocolate to melt, then stir until mixture is smooth. Set aside to cool completely and chill in the fridge until cold and thick. Pour over the top of cake and decorate with extra fresh blueberries. Serve immediately. Can be stored in an airtight container overnight, best eaten on the day.