Blueberry Cream Cheese Coffee Cake

I think this is a pretty good photo, don't you?
Well, it's better than the ones I've been posting, haha

   Nope, this cake does not have coffee in it. I suppose it's called a 'coffee cake' because it's good to have with coffee, just like a teacake is good with tea? Or good for tea? Anyway, I had three blocks of cream cheese (well, 1 and a half actually) and I wanted to make a cake that uses cream cheese but I did't want anything that uses too much cheese or else I won't have another chance to bake any other cream cheese recipes until we get some more. Get it?


   Thankfully, we can now get Tatura cream cheese for almost half the price of a block of Philadelphia cream cheese. I suppose Philadelphia cheese is creamier or more delicious or whatever, but we're not fussy folk and I believe in enjoying what food we can afford. Some people can't even afford a good, square meal per day. We've had a whole family- a mum and her children, (so many of them too!) come asking for some money and water at our house once. Poor kiddies. And mummy. 


   So should I be overly fussy over getting the best ingredients for baking, when cheaper ones which are good enough are available? I believe not. If I can afford to buy the more expensive stuff one day, Insya-Allah I will, but if I can't, I shouldn't grumble about it. And I won't. So remind me if I do.


   This is a pretty good recipe, and one that I'd probably make again. However, I seem to have problems  with cakes that need to be baked for over one-hour- the sides always turn out overbaked and black and burnt, just like with the Apple Crumble Teacake I made . I'm not quite sure how to counter  this problem, does anybody have any good tips that you ca share with me? I'd be really grateful.

   The ingredients & measurements below are what I've used, so visit the link for the original recipe and the metric measurements. 


BLUEBERRY CREAM CHEESE COFFEE CAKE
Source: JoyofBaking


The Whats:

Streusel Topping:

1/3 cup all purpose flour

1/3 cup coarse granulated sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/4 cup cold butter cut into pieces

Cream Cheese Filling:

8 ounce  cream cheese, at room temperature

1/4 cup granulated white sugar

1 large egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

1 tablespoon all purpose flour 

Cake Batter:

1 cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 cup good-quality margarine

1/2 cup soft brown sugar, tightly packed

1 large egg

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla essence

1/3 cup milk

1/2 cup (or more) blueberry filling

The How-Tos:

Preheat oven to 150C (original is 180C).

Grease and line the bottom of an 8x8-inch pan with baking paper (I don't have a springform pan, so I just used a regular one)..

Streusel Topping:

Mix the flour, sugar and cinnamon in one bowl. Cut in the butter using a fork, a  bread knife or the tips of your fingers  until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Cover and place mixture in the refrigerator (or freezer, which is what I did!) to keep it cold.

Cream Cheese Filling:

Place cream cheese in a bowl and beat using an electric mixer until creamy and smooth. Add the sugar, egg, vanilla and flour and beat until well incorporated. Set aside.

Cake Batter:

Whisk or sift flour and baking powder into a bowl.

In a separate bowl, beat the margarine until smooth and creamy. Add in sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until well incorporated. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk and eat until just combined. 

Assemble:

Spread the cake batter onto the bottom of the prepared pan and up the sides (the mixture is quite thick so this shouldn't be too  difficult). Pour the cream cheese filling on top of the cake batter. Spread or dollop generous spoonfuls of the blueberry filling on top of the cream cheese filling. Scatter the streusel topping on top.

Bake for about 50 to 60 minutes. Test using a toothpick- poke it into the centre of the cake. Wait for 5 minutes and pull it out, if it comes out clean it is ready. Remove from oven and let cool.

Serve warm or at room temperature. It's good enough on its own, but you can always have it with cream. Yum!

Baker's notes:
1. Using coarse granulated sugar gives the streusel topping a lovely crunch, which Littlest Brother approved of. 
2. The cake is best eaten o the day it's made, because the topping will slowly sort of soak the moisture from the cream cheese filling, I think, and will no longer be crumbly. But it's stil definitely good for eating. Definitely.

Apple Crumble Cake

   I'm making up for lost time.

 I made this Apple Crumble Cake a while ago and I loved, loved, loved it. In fact, I made it three times. It has entered my 10 top favourite cakes (I don't have an actual list though). Yeah. There are still some apples on the counter and I only refrained from making a fourth for fear my family will  throw them at my head (well, they wouldn't do that to food, but I shouldn't bore them with the same thing over and over again anyway).

Aren't they beautiful?
I wish apples grew here in Malaysia. That way I could plant one right outside my bedroom window.

   We had some apples browning in the fridge, so I wanted to bake something with apples. You cannot imagine (or perhaps you ca) how mind-boggling it is to choose a recipe! I took two days over it. 

That, ladies and gentlemen, is an apple corer.
Useful for, uhm, coring apples.
It's lost. Mum said I may have thrown it away with the apple skins
Somebody please knock some sense into me.

   And the apples kept browning. I finally choose this recipe because:

   1. It's from The Caked Crusader's blog, hehe, so what's not to love?
   2. It was baked and loved by a superhero, so what can an adoring fan do but make one too? 
   3. It has a crumble topping. I've always wanted to make a crumble cake ever since I found out about them, so this is one thing ticked off my wishlist. The topping also has cinnamon- I love cinnamon! Wait, should that be reason number 4?
   4. CC's introductory words about them. I quote: "This could be just about the best cake in the world. It’s more than a cake, sort of a cake/dessert hybrid – and if I haven’t caught your attention with a statement like that, then what are you doing on this site in the first place?"
   5. I was attracted to the step which involves whisking the eggs and sugar until it 'soufflés up' to 4 or 5 times its size. I love steps that involve whisking sugar and eggs. It's divine!
   6. It involves melted butter. I have no idea why this is a reason, since I didn't even use pure butter. Whoops.

   I also took down some notes while making the first cake, so I'll put them here. Hopefully they'll be useful in the future when I make them again.

   1. You're supposed to whisk the eggs and sugar using an electric mixer, because it'll take at least 10 minutes for the mixture to get to 4 or 5 times its original volume. I used a handheld electric mixer, and it took me nearly 25 minutes (with 4 or 5 30-second breaks in between). My hand got really stiff, and I was afraid the motor would heat up too much and blow up, but it didn't and the end result was worth it. I was right about reason number 5. 

   2. After the batter was ready, I started preparing  the apples, before which the batter was quite runny, like CC said it would be. When I was ready to pour the batter into the pan, discovered that it had thickened up, and even had bubbles which reminded me of a yeasted (if that is even a word) dough. I'm not sure if this was supposed to happen, but I poured into the pan and arranged the apples on top.
   3. (The cake is now out from the oven) I baked the cake at 175C. It's supposed to be baked for about 1.5 hours. At the 30th minute, I thought the top already looked nice and brown, and since I was afraid of burning it and there was still along way to go, I reduced the temperature to 150C. At the 45th minute, the cake looked ready and had even over-browned. I held myself from checking since there was still at least 0.5 hours to go. However, I checked it after another 10 minutes and no crumbs stuck to the knife I inserted. I think it was actually ready at the 40th minute. I wonder why, but after thinking about it, I think it was because the batter that went into the pan wasn't quite runny, and in fact I didn't have any trouble arranging the apples on top or worry that they would sink into the cake. So I suppose a runnier batter calls for a longer cooking time? (shrugs).

I'm looking for a way to make sure the  inside gets cooked without  overbaking the outer part of the cake. 

   Serve the cake with some lovely homemade Devonshire cream.

   [Click HERE for original recipe]

   Thank you CC, for such a lovely recipe! I've yet to produce a truly satisfying cake (which hereby refers to a cake that is both fully cooked inside without being overbaked on the outside- so far I've only managed either one), but so far the ones I've made have been gulped down so fast I wonder I wasn't sick!