Best of the Best from Alaska: Ugly Blueberry Cake

She's no beauty, that blueberry almond cheesecake tunnel, but she sure is sweet.

I read the recipe for this cake and decided I absolutely had to make it. There are a lot of those recipes in Best of the Best from Alaska, but my critics have informed me that it is not as much fun watching the Baker cook easy American dishes as it is watching her try to make Beggar's Chicken. So, yes, I will be moving on shortly.

Last night my sister invited us over and this was my contribution to the lovely meal. Justine is on a quest to duplicate some sun-dried tomato crostini she ate at the New York City restaurant, Ino, so we started with a bowl of that spread on baguette toasts. She thought her experiment fell short, but I loved it. Rich, dark red, nutty. After that: some excellent flank steak, corn on the cob, potatoes. . . and this blueberry eyesore.

I love cakes with tunnels, swirls, surprise fillings. To make this one you prepare a tiny bit of cheesecake batter (if I did it again I'd double the quantity) and set it aside. You then prepare the host batter -- sour cream/eggs/flour/leavenings/blueberries -- pour half of it in your bundt pan and dig a trench which you fill with cheesecake batter. Then spoon the rest of the blueberry batter over everything. Bake. Cool. Drizzle with a white icing. Then drizzle THAT with an icing that includes crushed fresh blueberries. I don't understand why you ice the cake twice, but it's not for me to question the wisdom of Best of the Blueberry Bash: 1994-2002, the cookbook that originally published this recipe.

How was the cake? Very tasty, and with some tweaking, probably be a prize-winner. But it wasn't quite delicious enough that I feel compelled to make that effort. My go-to cake from the Tipsy Baker project remains Niloufer Ichaporia King's elegant, exquisite cardamom cake.