Blueberry cake with cheesecake frosting (1 colour)

This easy-to-make cake looks beautiful and tastes absolutely delicious.


Ingredients
Self-raising flour - 225 g
Baking powder - 1 tsp
Golden caster sugar - 175 g
Butter - 175 g, warmed to room temperature
Vanilla essence - 2 tsp
Eggs - 3 large
Soured Cream - 4 tbsp
Fresh or frozen (defrosted) blueberries - 190 g

For the frosting:
Cream cheese (philadelphia) - 200 g
Soured cream - 1 dessert spoon
Icing sugar - 100g
Fresh blueberries - 150 g

Methods
1) Sieve the dry ingredients into a large bowl. Add the butter and beat for a couple of minutes. Add the vanilla essence and eggs and mix well.
2) Beat in the soured cream and then gently stir in the blueberries.
3) Pour the mixture into a round 22cm loose-bottomed cake tin, spread it level and bake at 180°C for 50 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool the cake for a few minutes and then turn out onto a wire rack.
4) When the cake has cooled completely, mix together the cream cheese, soured cream and icing sugar in a bowl. Spread on top of the cake and scatter the blueberries on top. Keep the cake in the fridge, but remove an hour before serving. Serves 8.

Orange and cranberry muffins (2 colours)

I've finally got round to buying a muffin tin - something I've been meaning to do for several weeks. There are so many muffins I'm looking forward to making - blueberry and lime, blueberry, lemon and raspberry, raspberry and nectarine...

Thanks to Mark at cookbook for this recipe. I used frozen cranberries (defrosted) for this as we can't buy fresh ones at any time of year other than Christmas. The recipe actually makes about 15 muffins (the holes in my tin are 7cm wide by 4cm deep), so I poured the excess mixture into a small pyrex dish to make one large muffin:

Ingredients
Cranberries - 140 g
Orange juice - 175 ml
Unsalted butter - 170 g, warmed to room temperature
Granulated sugar - 170 g
finely grated rind of 1.5 oranges
Eggs - 3 large
Plain flour - 300 g
Salt - pinch
Baking powder - 3 tsp
Milk - 175 ml

Methods
1) Place the cranberries in a small pan with the orange juice and heat gently until the juice just starts to simmer. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.
2) Cream the butter with the sugar and grated orange rind. Beat the eggs into the butter. Sieve the plain flour, salt and baking powder and fold in to the mixture along with the milk. Fold in the cooled cranberries and orange juice to form a batter.
3) Grease a 12 cup muffin pan. Divide the batter into 12 cups and bake in the oven at 190°C for about 25-30 minutes or until golden brown. Serves 12.