Celebrating 3 million hits (and hopefully more) with cupcakes & blueberry tea cake

uber pretty cupcakes, decorated by Ms. Lyrical Lemongrass

Regular readers to this blog will know, I usually celebrate my million hits count by making some homemade treat for friends. This time round, due to work commitments, I let my 3 million hits go quietly by and pushed celebrations until yesterday when a small group of us got together.

1. cupcake meets butterfly, 2. here's how you do it with muruku piping skills, 3. pretty as a picture cupcakes with barely pink buttercream

When it comes to baking, I've no problems churning out baked goodies but ask me to frost or make anything pretty, I shudder as first, I lack the patience to nicely ice anything and second, my hand has a teeniest tremor hence my piping skills is slightly shaky. Hence when Lyrical Lemongrass said she wanted to decorate cupcakes, it sounded like a perfect match. Baking on Sunday morning didn't yield perfect results - vanilla cupcakes in large muffin-like but very pretty polka dot cases I had discovered in Bake with Yen Puchong, teeny weeny chai cupcakes that didn't taste like chai even though I used 2 bags of Gryphon Straits Tea Chai, buttercream that died on me (the eggwhites didn't see to rise, probably because I dripped a little egg yolk) and a new cake, blueberry tea cake from Bill Granger's Feed Me Now! cookbook.

the gorgeous fluffy and slightly rustic blueberry tea cake courtesy of Bill Granger

We gathered at Paprika's place and discovered Lyrical Lemongrass is a pro in decorating cupcakes as she's been honing her skills on muruku making. Believe me, she can make perfect circles with her steady piping hands and give any professional bakers a run for the monies! Under her skillful hands, my cupcakes became uber pretty with a barely pink buttercream whipped up by Paprika.

rise, oh mighty cake.....levitation skills by Paprika

Suprisingly the cake of the moment was this "first-time attempt" - the blueberry tea cake with a cream cheese frosting from Bill Granger's new cookbook, Feed Me Now! It calls for seasonal blueberries (currently going for a very reasonable RM9.90 at Cold Storage) and sour cream mixed with soda bicarbonate to give it a fluffy, moist and light texture that had all of us clamouring for seconds. In the midst of cutting cake, we also discovered Paprika's hidden skills - she can make cakes levitate in mid-air even better than David Copperfield!

It was a great afternoon, a little hectic in the morning churning out cakes but so fun to see someone else do the decorating. Thanks to Paprika, Hunky and Lyrical Lemongrass for celebrating with me. Last but not least, thanks to all of you readers for clicking away on this blog and keeping it very alive for me to even celebrate this way. I'm enclosing the blueberry tea cake's recipe below, so enjoy making it! For more fun decorating pictures, see my Flickr set.

Blueberry tea cake (adapted from Bill Granger's Feed Me Now! cookbook)

210ml sour cream

1/2 teaspoon soda bicarbonate
180g butter, at room temperature

250g sugar (original calls for 330g sugar but I reduced them for my cake)

2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest

1 teaspoon natural vanilla extract

3 medium eggs

250g fresh or frozen blueberries

375g plain flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

cream cheese frosting

250g cream cheese, at room temperature

100g butter, at room temperature

1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest

1 teaspoon natural vanilla extract

200g icing sugar, sifted (I reduced it from the original 250g)

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease a 23 x 33 cm baking tin and line with baking paper. I cut the paper a little longer on the sides, so I can lift it up from the pan and peel it off after it cooled down. Mix the sour cream with soda bicarbonate and set aside for 5 minutes.

Beat butter and sugar in a bowl until light and creamy. Add lemon zest and vanilla, beat to combine. Beat in the eggs, one at a time and add the sour cream mixture (which would have puffed up and became fluffy!) and mix until evenly combined. Put blueberries into another bowl and toss with a little flour. Sift the rest of flour and baking powder over cake mixture and fold to gently combine. Gently fold in the blueberries. Spoon mixture into tin and bake for 45-50 minutes or until skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin for 10 minutes and turn onto a rack. Alternatively you can let the cake cool in the pan and remove by just plucking it out with the longer sides and peeling the paper off before icing the cake.

To make frosting: Beat cream cheese, butter, lemon zest and vanilla together in a bowl until light and fluffy, then mix in icing sugar until smooth. Top cake with frosting or you can even do a lemon drizzle where you just melt icing sugar with a little lemon zest and lemon juice to drizzle over warm cake.