It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost 5 months since my last post and close to half a year since I’ve gone back to work! It’s a challenge finding time to bake on the weekends and long gone are the days when I could muster up enough energy to stay up till 2am on a weekday just to try out a new recipe.

Fortunately, I have some time off from work in the remaining 2 weeks of this year, so I undusted my muffin pan and baked a dozen blueberry muffins. It’s been so long since I baked these muffins that I’d completely forgotten if I’d previously lined the pan with muffin cups or if I’d simply greased the pan. I’d tried both methods before, but preferred one over the other. I went with greasing the pan and ended up having a very difficult time removing the muffins from the pan.

Note to self: Don’t be lazy and line the pan with muffin cups with this recipe!

Blueberry Muffins (Recipe adapted from allrecipes.com)
Makes 12 large muffins

Ingredients
2 eggs
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon powder
dash of ground nutmeg
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup sour cream
1 cup blueberries (a 125g box of berries is just right)

Method
1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees C. Line a 12-cup muffin tray with paper muffin liners.

2. Coat blueberries with flour to prevent blueberries from bleeding too much when baking by swirling the blueberries gently in a bowl with a small amount of flour. Sift together flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg in a large bowl.

3. In another large bowl beat eggs, gradually add sugar while beating. Continue beating while slowly pouring in oil. Stir in vanilla extract.

4. Stir dry ingredients into egg mixture alternately with sour cream. Gently fold in blueberries. Scoop batter into prepared muffin tray. Fill the cups to slightly beyond 3/4 full.

5. Bake in preheated oven for 20 mins. If the muffins don’t look golden brown enough after 20 mins, bake for a further 5 mins or so at 200 degrees C.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Thank you all for your comments and enquiries about cakes, cookies, macarons and classes! I apologize for my tardy replies and general silence on this blog. As you may already have guessed, I’ve just had a baby girl this March.

Baking pans and kitchen mixers have been replaced with diapers and bottle sterilizers these past 4 months. And have I mentioned the sleepless nights?

That having been said, we’re greatly blessed that Ashley is generally a very happy (and very active) baby. I’m hoping that sanity will be restored in our lives soon and that I’ll be able to bake more frequently.

All I’ve managed so far are 2 trays of brownies, which I wouldn’t even have baked if it weren’t for the fact that I felt embarrassed turning up at a friend’s place empty-handed.

I also wanted to make some sort of cake for my sister’s civil wedding reception, but only managed the bridal bouquet with lots of help from WL, who has a wonderful talent for arranging the most gorgeous bridal bouquets and who also very graciously helped satisfy my macaron cravings these past months.

And that’s all the update I’ve got time and energy for at the moment. I hope to find some time to whip up a batch of macarons soon, so stay tuned!

I’d be the first to admit that I’m not a huge fan of cupcakes. Given the choice between a cupcake and a slice of cake, I’d invariably go with the slice.

I think it has something to do with the frosting-to-cake ratio and the fact that the few times I’ve made cupcakes, the cake tended to shrink away from the waxy cups, leaving an unsightly gap between cake and cup.

So why did I bake these cupcakes? There were two reasons. One being that it’s the Lunar New Year and the first year ever that my family didn’t make pineapple tarts (dad and mum are away on vacation in Beijing), I couldn’t help but feel that something was missing if I didn’t bake anything for the festive season. The second was a cupcake-related email and blog post by Ivan.

The recipe I chose comes from Cheryl’s The Cupcake Bake Shop. I decided on this particular cupcake because of the Asian elements of green tea and adzuki beans (something in line with the festive season theme) and because of the very pretty photograph of the cupcake’s cross-section in her blog post.

The sis was very skeptical about the flavour combination, especially when I told her about the red bean paste component, but she actually liked the cupcakes when she had them!

I personally liked the taste and texture of the cupcake. The cupcakes did shrink somewhat, especially the ones that I kept at room temperature and the frosting was slightly grainy, but I felt that the cupcakes turned out great overall. Thanks for generously sharing your very inspiring cupcake recipes, Cheryl!

Note: If you do intend to try the recipe out for yourself, be forewarned the adzuki bean paste is indeed very time-consuming to make as Cheryl already states in her recipe.