Blueberry streusel cake

There seem to be a lot of blueberries on offer in the supermarkets, so decided to buy some to try out a recipe given to me by my friend. She says it's a cross between a blueberry muffin and an old fashioned cheesecake with a cream cheese filling. Sounds interesting. I think the original recipe must be American, as it's called a coffeecake.

Topping:
120g butter, softened
150g sugar
30g brown sugar
60g chopped nuts
11/2 tspn cinnamon
1/2tspn nutmeg

Cream cheese filling:
375g cream cheese
90g sugar
1 egg
grated rind of a lemon
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tspn almond essence

Cake:
500g plain flour
4 tspn baking powder
1 tspn salt
120g butter, softened
300g sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 tspn almond essence
300ml milk
750g fresh blueberries

Preheat oven 375F/190C/gas 5

Generously butter a 32x22cm [13x9"] glass baking dish

Topping - rub all the ingredients together till large crumbs.
Filling- soften cheese and beat with the sugar using an electric mixer till creamy. Beat in the egg, lemon rind and juice and almond essence till smooth.
Cake - Put flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. In another bowl put the butter and sugar and beat with an electric mixer till light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the eggs and then the almond essence.
Beat in rhe flour mixture gently, alternating with some milk, till it's well mixed; if it's too stiff, add a little more milk, then fold in the blueberries.
Spread about half of the mixture on the bottom of the dish, smoothing the top and making sure it's right in the corners. Spread the cheese filling over and sprinkle with about a quarter of the topping. Drop the remaining cake mixture on top by spoonfuls, but try not to mix up the layers! Sprinkle the rest of the topping evenly over the surface.
Bake till the topping is crisp and golden - about 50 mins to 1 hour.
When cool, cut into squares.

The recipe sounds complicated but it isn't. It's a bit of a faff making the topping, but I added the spices to the flour, then rubbed in the butter and sugar and finally the nuts.

I love the cheese filling and the streusel topping which give the cake different textures.

 The reason a glass dish is suggested for cooking is because the blueberries 'could react with metal'. Not sure I agree with this, as I've cooked blueberry cakes many times in a springform tin with no problems. Anyway, I used my glass shepherd's pie dish, which was about the right size.

It's not an every day cake, well not for us anyway, too many calories, but it's a nice cake to make to share with friends, or as a dessert maybe, with some creme fraiche.

Cranberry crumble muffins

I'm sure it's everyone's 'using up leftovers' time this week, and I'd bought some cranberries and not used them. We love muffins and just to make them a bit different, I added some crumble mix on the top. I saw a chef doing this on one of the food programmes. They called it 'streusel topping' and I don't know if it's different from the run-of-the-mill crumble topping?
I used my usual muffin recipe and added the cranberries and some mixed spice.
This is my tried and tested muffin recipe, gathered from a friend in the US.

I'm not sure why, but I seem to make a different number of muffins each time I use the recipe! Today I made 11.

225g plain flour
100g caster sugar]
2 tspns baking powder
1 heaped tspn mixed spice

1/2 tspn salt
1 egg
250ml milk
120ml sunflower oil [ I usually use rapeseed, but only had sunflower left ]

Preheat oven 200C/400F/gas6

Either grease a muffin tin or put paper cases into the holes.

Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl.
Mix the milk, egg and oil together in a jug then add to the dry ingredients - just stir it gently and don't overmix.
Spoon the mixture into the cases or into the tin filling them nearly full.
For the topping I used 50g plain flour and 25g butter rubbed together and 1 tbspn of soft brown sugar added to the mixture. I then sprinkled a little on top of each muffin.
Bake for 15-20 mins till golden.
Cool on a wire rack.

A very Happy New Year. xx

ps My lovely dil bought me a cake stand as one of my Christmas pressies. I love it.