cake in a cup

It is more than a month since I last baked something! I was so caught up with cleaning up the house, clearing the clutters, removing old textbooks to make room for new ones, and shopping for winter clothes and gears for our trip. When I have time to take a breather, I would be crawling over the web, looking for ways and means...to climb over the Great fire Wall of China.

We will be spending the year end school holidays in China, where blogger, wordpress, youtube, facebook, twitter are all blocked. After testing out a few alternative ways of climbing over the great firewall, I managed to find a possible solution to update my blog without having to access Blogger. The one that works well is to publish a post via email. So instead of creating a new post in blogger, I have to compose the post within an email. It will be posted once I sent it to my mail2blogger address. The next issue is, how to view my blog post or visit the blogs that I frequent...the way to get around it is to read blog updates via Google reader. However, I won't be able to view the images, only text will be displayed, I tested out RSS feed reader, but it didn't work well. The worst is, I won't be able to leave any comments on blogs or reply to any comments or questions on my own blog post. I will have to be a silent reader until we return...so pardon me if I am not able to answer your questions promptly. Well, at least I get to update my blog!

In my attempt to clear the leftover ingredients in my fridge, I planned to make my favourite Fruit Pastry Cake. However, to save time from lining my cake pan, I baked the cake in paper muffin cups. I also took the liberty to cut down on the sugar amount from 150g to 120g. To speed things up, I transfered the finished batter into a clear plastic bag, snipped off a corner of the plastic bag, and used it like a piping bag to fill up each paper cup. Not only it makes spooning of the batter so much easier, it was neater and no mess!

But, my brain has gone rusty...blame it on the long break in between my baking sessions...when I was about to put the tray of filled paper cups into the oven, I was greeted with a 'dark' oven. I had totally forgotten to turn on the oven! There was no choice but to let the batter wait for the oven to be preheated. I thought it was going to be a gone case...but to my surprise, the cake rose high up over the rim just 15mins into baking :)

      

Thanks to my baking fairy, the blunder I made didn't affect the texture or taste of the cake at all. Even though it is a cake, it is quite similar to a muffin. It was a real breakfast treat for me as I haven't had any homemade cakes for weeks.

Although this is not a cupcake per se, I will like to submit this Blueberry Cake in a cup to Aspiring Bakers #13: Enjoy Cupcakes! (November 2011), hosted by Min's Blog. I hope it will be accepted :)




Blueberry Cake in a cup

Ingredients:
(makes about 9 cupcakes)

100g unsalted butter, soften at room temperature
120g caster sugar
50g yogurt (plain or blueberry flavour)
3 eggs, (medium size) lightly beaten, room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
210g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
some fresh blueberries


Method:

1. With an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Add yogurt, mix to combine.
2. Dribble in the eggs gradually and beat till incorporated in the batter. (The mixture may appear slightly curdled.)
3. Add vanilla extract, mix to combine.
4. Sieve over flour and baking powder and mix with a spatula till smooth.
5. Spoon batter into paper liners, fill it to about 3/4 full. Top with some fresh blueberries (if using frozen berries, do not thaw).
6. Bake in pre-heat oven at 180degC for 25-30 minutes until golden or a skewer comes out clean when inserted into the centre. 
7. Transfer to wire rack to let cool completely. Dust the top with some icing sugar if desired. Serve warm.