Berries in general are expensive in this part of the tropics. A cupful of raspberries, blueberries or blackberries goes for a sweet S$9.90! Which is positively sinful, don't you think? Last week, the gods of berries deigned to reduce the prices of blueberries by half. And since I prefer my fruit cooked, I figured I might as well take advantage of the offer and pick up a pack of the inky hued fruit. In deciding what to do with them, I turned to my now trusty The Last Course by Claudia Fleming. I'd been meaning to try her Blueberry Cream Cheese Tarts with Graham Cracker Crust, but for the life of me failed to find a store that stocked the whole wheat pastry flour that the recipe calls for. I finally found it in Bangkok of all places, which I visited over the weekend, but that's another post for another day.
I settled for Ms Fleming's Blueberry Corncakes instead since I had all the ingredients on hand. And they didn't disappoint. As the author describes, "these golden little cakes are absolutely irresistible". Made with almond flour, yellow cornmeal (polenta), butter and egg whites, these cakes turned out utterly scrummy in mini-muffin size as opposed to regular sized muffins, which were a tad on the heavy side. The recipe calls for a whopping two and two-thirds cups of icing sugar, which made them slightly sweeter than I would have liked. But other than that, they were a real winner. Leave them out for another day and they taste even better. The cornmeal seemed to have time to meld into the cake and leave less of a crunch. One of the best things about these beautiful little cakes are the blueberries scattered throughout the batter, which pop in the heat of the oven, intensifying their flavour and making wee pockets of jam within. They are a real tea time treat, though I ended up having them for breakfast and with ice cream for dessert after dinner as well.
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