I was aiming to post this before a weekend since it’s a dessert and baked things sometimes take a bit more time to produce but I wanted to get this up here before blackberries are but a distant memory of the summer.

The cake itself is super quick and easy. The sauce takes a bit more hands on time but it’s worth every second, at least I think so. Again, this is one of those summer standbys. We have huge blackberry bushes lining the entire length of my mother’s giant garden in Connecticut.

So I grew up eating this sauce all of August on top of Eggo waffles and on ice cream and on a simple yellow round cake that is similar to the cake I made here.

This cake though is gluten-free. It also utilizes yogurt, which for awhile there I was drowning in after having worked on a shoot for a certain big Greek yogurt company. Yay for perks of working on the culinary team! I made out like a damn bandit.

With the sauce I also decided to see if I could use something less refined like maple syrup instead of regular sugar and it worked like a charm. Careful using a wooden spoon with this, it will get stained a lovely shade of magenta.

I think it’s an improvement really.

Blackberry Sauce

Ingredients:

1 ½ pints blackberries

¼ cup maple syrup (you may need to add more depending on the sweetness of your berries)

squeeze of half a lemon

Directions:

Throw your blackberries, maple syrup, and lemon juice into a small saucepan on a low to medium heat. Stirring occasionally and keeping at a low simmer. It will take the berries about 40 minutes to break down and for the sauce to be the right consistency. It will seem juicier than you think it should. But wait there’s more to come.

After 40 minutes, take your cooked berries off the heat. Gather a medium bowl, a small-medium fine mesh strainer and a spoon.

Place the strainer over the bowl and pour just a bit of the sauce into the strainer. Using the back of the spoon begin to press on the remaining chunky pulp getting as much solid berry as you can through the strainer. You should be left with mainly seeds once you’ve gotten as much as you can out of the pulp. Dump the seeds and start again with another pour of cooked berries. Continue in small batches until your saucepan is empty and your bowl is now full of strained berry puree.

Use this sauce to pour over the below cake, or other cake of your choice. Or ice cream. Or waffles. Or yogurt. Or anything…….should last about 2 weeks in the fridge.

Yield: approximately 2 cups

Olive Oil Yogurt Cake

adapted lightly from this cake from Canelle et Vanille

Yield: 1 nine inch round cake

Ingredients:

small amount of butter for greasing/flouring pan

3 eggs

1 cup raw sugar

1 cup full fat Greek yogurt

1/2 cup olive oil

Zest of 1 lemon

1 cup brown rice flour (mine was sprouted and organic), plus a bit extra to flour pan.

1/2 cup millet flour

2 tablespoons tapioca starch

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions:

Heat oven to 350 degrees

Line a round 9-inch cake pan with parchment paper. Then butter and flour the sides of the pan.

Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, yogurt, olive oil and lemon zest.

Once mixed, add in the brown rice flour, millet flour, tapioca starch, baking powder and salt. Whisk again to thoroughly incorporate.

Pour into the cake pan and spread it out evenly.

Bake cake for 30 to 40 minutes or until it’s edges have turned a lovely golden brown and a cake tester comes out clean.

Let cake cool in pan and then run a knife around the edges and flip onto a plate. Remove the parchment paper from the bottom of the cake then take your serving plate or platter and flip cake again so the top is now the top once more.

Serve slices with blackberry sauce drizzled on top and I mean it’s not like ice cream on the side would be out of place either.