New Year, New Recipe

  

  First of all - Happy New Year! The fact that a whole year has passed and we are already almost half way through January genuinely scares me. I mean, not that it should. I just feel a new year should bring new goals and aspirations. Yet for me, they haven't changed over the past 3 years as my goal is always to complete the second half (and arguably more challenging) of the uni year. 

  Secondly, I can only apologise for the lack of content recently. Some people may have wondered why? Some people may not have noticed and there are many who are not even aware of this blogs existence. I could name multiple reasons and excuses but what it all boils down to is just not leaving enough time to do the things I really enjoy. Third year took me surprise and I would be lying if I said I sailed through it. I did not.

  With the ever increasing work load, becoming a committee member for the hockey team and trying to fit in time to spend with my friends I just didn't want to bake or spend time writing up my recipes. It began to feel as mundane as uni work and revision. I decided to give myself a break and come back to it when I naturally felt I wanted to bake not that I had to. SO, here we are, almost 5 months later. 

  I wasn't originally going to make a post as I haven't posted in so long I wanted to wait until I had a complete showstopper to show you all, but my flatmates made claims that it was "the best on yet" and I felt that, even if it doesn't LOOK the part, it really does come down to the taste in the end. 

  Just a pre-warning, I used "cup" measurements for most of the ingredients as I got the loveliest measuring cups as a Christmas gift.

Prep Time: 20 minutes. 

Cooking Tie: 45-55 minutes. 

Easiness: Easy.

Ingredients: 

• 115g of unsalted butter.
• 1 cup of caster sugar.
• zest of 1 lemon.
•  ½ cup of milk .
• 2 large eggs.
• 1 ½ cup of plain flour. 
• 1 tsp baking powder. 
• ½ tsp salt. 
• 1½ cup of fresh blueberries. 
• ½ cup of sugar (for glaze)
• juice of 1 lemon (for glaze)

Method: 

1. Preheat the oven to 175° and line a loaf tin with baking paper. 
2. Add butter, sugar and lemon zest to a bowl and then cream together. 
3. Next, add the milk and eggs and mix until combined fully. 
4. In a separate bowl mix the flour, baking powder and salt then add to other bowl in small batches, stirring each time. 
5. Using a spatula, stir in the blueberries until spread evenly through the batter. 
   
6. Pour the batter into the loaf tin and place in the oven for 45 minutes. Only remove from oven once the cake is fully cooked. You can test this by placing a skewer into the centre of the cake. If it is ready, it should come out clean. 
7. In a small bowl, add the sugar and lemon juice and mix well. 
8. Pour into a piping bag. 
9. Using a skewer, create small holes in the loaf so the lemon juice will get into the sponge. 
10. Snip the end of the piping bag and pour juice over the entire cake.
11. I made a bit of extra just plain icing (water and icing sugar) and spread it across the top of the loaf once cooled and added some dried rose petals. 

I really enjoyed this cake, it was so tasty! Although next time I would coat the blueberries in flour to prevent them sinking to the bottom. I hope you enjoyed this post and as always, let me know if you tried it!