The best blueberry muffin cake

Method

Prep:15min  ›  Cook:45min  ›  Ready in:1hr 

1. Preheat an oven to 170 C / Gas 3. Prepare an 18cm round cake tin. In a large mixing bowl combine all the dry ingredients, so that's the plain flour, baking powder and the sugars.
2. in a separate bowl or mixing jug combine all the wet ingredients. That's the 2 eggs, vegetable oil, milk or buttermilk and vanilla.
3. now make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and tip in the wet ingredients. Now quickly and determinedly fold the two mixtures into one lumpy batter. The trick here is to not overwork the mixture. A few turns with a spoon and you're done. Lumps are good, I know it goes against every baking fibre in your body but lumps in muffins equal lightness.
4. Now just tip in your blueberries and give one last stir before pouring into the greased cake tin. If you like you blueberries to bleed into the mixture a lot I recommend halving them or squishing a few. The reason for tossing the fruit in flour before should help keep them suspended in the cake batter while it cooks so that they don't all end up at the bottom.
5. Now create the crusty top by scattering over the flaked almonds and a good sprinkling of demerara sugar. I find demerara is the best sugar to use on cake toppings; it gives a good crispy sugar crust.
6. Place in the oven for about 45 minutes, until when skewer comes out clean without wet batter sticking to it. If your cake starts to brown a lot on top - usually this can happen after 30 minutes - you can lower the temperature of the oven a little or place a bit of tin foil over the cake to stop the browning. However, just be aware that this may alter the cooking time.

Other ideas

Make this cake into 12 muffins by dividing the mixture equally between 12 muffin cases and cooking at 180 degrees for 25 minutes

Substitution

You can vary this mixture by adding chocolate chips, toffee, grated apple and cinnamon with a pecan top clementine and poppy seed, lemon and poppy seed or anything you fancy really.

Other ideas

I like to use both a light brown sugar and a caster sugar because a believe it gives a greater depth of flavour and a more rounded sweetness but you can just use 125g of white sugar if you wish.

Tip

As with all cooking times be aware of the strength of your oven some are more powerful then others so adjust the time or temperature of your oven as you see fit. Just remember to start the oven temperature at 170 C to start the baking powder working (you can reduce this temp later) and the cake is done when a skewer comes out clean. This cake will always be quite moist and sqidgy and dare I say a little stodgy but that's what makes it divine.