Blueberry buckle

This time around I got my hands on fresh blueberries and blackberries (courtesy, USA return Mr.Rao). My first time tasting fresh blueberries, wasn’t as much as I’d built it up in my head. Nevertheless, I had to bake something. Instinctively I thought of a simple sponge with blueberries. Didn’t seem enough though, so I looked up some blueberry desserts online (girl’s gotta bake, people). I found something very similar to what I had in mind, but with a streusel topping. Streusel is a buttery crumbly topping you’d find on pies and certain cakes. You can try this even with strawberries I suppose. In a nutshell, I was going to bake a Blueberry Buckle!
Ingredients
Streusel topping:
1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup granulated sugar
¼ cup chilled butter
¼ tsp cinnamon powder
Cake batter:
1 cup sifted flour
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
½ cup butter (room temp)
1 cup sugar (powdered to make life easier)
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1/3 cup warm milk
1 ½ cups fresh blueberries
Method:
For the streusel, combine all the ingredients in a bowl and using a fork mash the chilled butter till it resembles coarse bread crumbs. Keep aside.
For the cake batter, combine the dry ingredients and keep aside. With your hand blender or even a fork, cream the butter till fluffy. Add the sugar and cream it till well combined and fluffy. Now add the egg and vanilla and mix well. Now add the flour mixture and milk alternatively and fold it into the butter mixture, without whisking or ever beating it.
Pour the cake batter into a greased baking tin (8 inch) and smoothen the top with a spatula. Tip the blueberries evenly across the batter. Top it with the streusel and bake for 50 minutes or till the top is nice and brown in color. Make sure you do the tooth pick test. If it comes out clean you know what to do. Take it out and let it cool.
Serving …must: Warm/hot with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, please!
I have some in the fridge I need to polish it off clean ;)
PS: I am going to bombard the blog with more dessert recipes. Kindly put up with my sweet tooth. I have to cater to its needs from time to time.

Blueberry banana muffin

The fiance was back from the US after a 2 week work related trip. I am so very fortunate to have a man who 'listens' when I jabber what would be of absolute irrelevance to him. For instance when I whine about how we have no blueberries growing here and how I wish I had some to bake muffins or any dessert. It was tremendously sweet of him to remember all the whining and get me a pack of dried blueberries (would've been better if it were fresh, but hey what the hell!). So then followed blueberry banana muffins. Why the banana? I figured since the berries weren't fresh, they wouldn't kick in a lot of flavour. And I was right. They were nice but maybe I'd ask him to get fresh ones nicely packed the next time. But for now, I'm just glad I have atleast the dried ones :)

Ingredients:

1 cup flour

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp cinnamon powder

3/4 cup mashed banana

1/4 cup curd

1 egg

1/3 cup oil / melted butter

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup toasted walnuts

1/2 cup fresh/fozen/dried blueberries

a pinch of salt

Method

Combine the dry ingredients together. In a separate bowl mix in the wet ingredients. Add the dry to wet mix and fold. Do not over-mix else the muffins would turn hard. Now fold in the blueberries and walnuts. Scoop 2 tb sp batter into each muffin mould or fill it up 3/4th of the mould. Bake for 20 mins at 190 C in your pre-heated oven. Let them cool and enjoy with some coffee or serve them warm for breakfast. They're not too sweet or heavy as I'd expected. Quite light and tasty. You get a bit of everything, banana, blueberry, walnut and cinnamon. Real good treat!

Blueberry cheesecake

I had this tin of blueberry fruit filling. I wanted to use it for muffins. But when I saw the picture of a cheesecake topped with the fruit filling, I was tempted to try my hand on a cheesecake. The cheesecakes that I have eaten at various restaurants cafes, have a thick crust with a bite to it and the cheesecake was a spongy sometimes grainy textured so called 'cream cheese' filling. Was never a big fan of this kind. And so I thought it's about time I tried making what I wanted to taste (in my head, the cheesecake had to be smooth and creamy). So here is what I ended up with, and I must say I liked it. I can still improvise, but I did get pretty close.
Ingredients:
Crust:
5 nos. digestive biscuts
4 nos. marie biscuts
4 nos. glucose biscuts
2 tb sp butter (melted)
Filling:
2 cups hung curd (cream cheese)
1 cup thick fresh cream
3/4 cup sugar (powdered)
1 tsp vanilla
2 tb sp blueberry fruit filling
1 tsp gelatin
Method:
Run all the biscuts in the blender till it looks like sand. Tip in the butter and blitz some more. Now put this mix on your pie tin and press the bread crumbs to form a crust. Pop it into the freezer till you get your cream cheese filling. Whip the fresh cream till it forms soft peaks. Mix this into the cream cheese along with the rest of the ingredients.
Soak gelatin in 2 tsp cold water for 30 mins. Use a double boiler and melt the gelatin. Add this into the cream cheese mixture. Pour this mix into the pie tin lined with the biscut crust and let it chill for 5-6 hours or preferably overnight. Remove and top it with a generous amount of blueberry fruit filling. You could subsitute the blueberry filling with fresh mangoes or strawberries. This is a very refreshing dessert on a warm night.
Try to fight the urge of licking the bowl clean of the cream cheese filling ;-)