who has two thumbs and likes brunch?

this guy!

we had our annual christmas brunch last week and besides a strata (ham and swiss this time, with a lil green onion!) and sweet potato bacon hash (that basically described itself. plus add more onions, garlic, and a little WOODSTEAD to taste, if you have it. hot sauce will do too but it is clearly the poorer choice), I made a blueberry buttermilk breakfast cake. KIND OF.

I found the original recipe on Pinterest and it is from alexandra cooks. I wanted to make something sweet to go with my savory strata and this looked perfect. it's like a dense, yummy scone in cake form - but to make it more seasonal, I subbed cranberries for the blueberries and orange zest for the lemon zest. in the summer, raspberries or blackberries would be AMAZING. We loved it so much that I made another this morning because I missed the other one. Badly. I used frozen blueberries and lemon zest this time.

1/2 C. butter, room temperature

2 tsp. lemon zest (or more if you are into that kind of thing. you know I am)

7/8 C. sugar, plus some for sprinkling on top later

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla

2 C. flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. kosher salt

2 c. blueberries, fresh or frozen

1/2 c. buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350. Cream butter and lemon zest and sugar together until fluffy. YUM! Add the egg and vanilla and mix until combined. The recipe suggests to toss the blueberries together with 1/4 c. of the flour - I did this the first time I made it and did not the second time, with no noticeable difference. So - do whatever you want, fancy pants, it's your breakfast and you can flour it if you want to. if you do not, then remove the fourth a cup of flour, I suppose. mix together the remaining flour, baking powder and salt separately. add the flour mixture a little bit at a time, alternating with the buttermilk until everything is combined and then fold in the berries. grease a 9x9 pan and put the batter in and sprinkle a little sugar over the top. bake for about 35 minutes (I needed about 8 minutes more) until top is ever so slightly browned and a tooth pick comes out clean.