Blueberry Crumble Tray Bake

 

 

Are muffins destined to remain perennial favourites or could they become passe in 2013 and be replaced by the Tray Bake?

 

I'm probably swimming against the foodie fashion tide . But in our time stretched lives a tray bake is faster. Another advantage is that it can be cut into tiny or large slices to suit individual appetites. And it's easier to store a slab of cake in a tin ( or freeze it).

A tray bake is simply a large oblong cake. To bake this one I used a baking dish which is 33cm long, 23 cm wide and 5 cm deep and this worked perfectly for this recipe.

Ingredients:

250 gm of butter ( at room temperature)
250 gm of caster sugar
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence or Heilala vanilla paste
250 gm of selfraising flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder
300 gram of fresh/ frozen blueberries ( I used frozen)

Crumble:
250 gm of selfraising flour
125 gram of chilled butter
125 gram of caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 180C
Lightly grease and Line the baking tin with baking paper
Cream the butter and sugar till light and creamy and then beat in the vanilla essence and the eggs one by one.
Fold in the flour and baking powder and mix until combined.
Spread the cake batter evenly into the tin.
Sprinkle the blueberries over.

For the crumble:

Put all the ingredients into the food processor and whizz until fine crumbs are formed.
Put into a bowl and push the mixture together with your hands until a crumbly texture is formed.
Spread evenly over the blueberries

Bake at 180C for 45 minutes.

This is a recipe I'd like to play around with a little more. Blueberries and almonds go well with each other so next time I'll use 50 gm less of flour, and add 50 gm of ground almonds instead. Or/and add some grated lemon/orange rind to add a citrussy touch. And for a less substantial cake the crumble could be left off and the cake simply dredged with icing sugar when cool. But it's definitely a cake with possibilities.
And here's another idea from Mark's and Spencer which I'll just have to explore. They make a crumble with
2 tb of demarara sugar
2 tb of flour
25 gm of butter
35 gm of toasted and skinned hazelnuts
sounds yummy!
http://social.marksandspencer.com/recipes/blueberry-streusel-traybake/