Lavender Lemon Blackberry Pound Cake

Reprinted from Cooking with Flowers: Sweet and Savory Recipes with Rose Petals, Lilacs, Lavender, and Other Edible Flowers by Miche Bacher. Excerpted with permission from Quirk Books.

The combination of lavender, blackberry, and lemon makes this lovely cake lightly sweet and tart. Makes one 9-by-5-by-3-inch loaf or 12 mini cakes.

Ingredients:

• 4 tablespoons fresh lavender buds (or 2 tablespoons dried)
• ¾ cup buttermilk
• 2 ½ cups sifted all-purpose flour
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 pint blackberries
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs plus 2 egg yolks
• Zest of 1 lemon
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 325°F. If you are using a single loaf pan, coat it with nonstick spray. If you are using disposable mini loaf pans, set them on a baking sheet.
2. Submerge lavender buds in buttermilk and let them infuse for 30 minutes or longer. (If you aren't going to make the cakes within the next 2 hours, cover and refrigerate the infusion until you're ready to bake.)
3. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Add blackberries and toss until they're thoroughly coated. (Coating berries in the flour mixture prevents them from sinking to the bottom of the batter.)
4. Beat butter with a mixer on medium speed for 2 minutes, or until smooth and creamy. Gradually beat in sugar. Beat mixture for 5 minutes, or until it is once again light and fluffy. Stop mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl. Beat in eggs, one at a time, and make sure they don't just sit at the bottom of the mixing bowl. Mix in lemon zest and juice. Turn off mixer and do the rest of the mixing by hand, first stirring in some of the flour mixture, then the lavender-buttermilk infusion, and finally the remaining flour mixture.
5. Pour cake batter into the prepared pan(s) and bake for 35 to 40 minutes for a single pound cake or 25 to 30 minutes for mini cakes. The top of the cake will be golden and a metal tester inserted in the center will come out clean. Let it rest in the pan for about 5 minutes before flipping it out onto a wire rack to finish cooling. Pour glaze over cake and eat it right away or store it for up to 4 days wrapped in an airtight container.

Lemon Glaze

• 2 cups confectioner's sugar
• 3 tablespoons lemon juice

Instructions:

Whisk confectioner's sugar and lemon juice until no lumps remain. For glaze that melts into pound cake and virtually disappears, you'll want to mix the glaze together quickly and pour it on as soon as the cake is done baking. For a thicker glaze, wait 20 minutes or until the cake is no longer hot, but not quite room temperature either, before glazing it.