Blueberry Cotton Cake

Long weekend is almost over in a couple of hours. I had so many baking plan to make before the weekend had even started, but it just flew by so quickly. In fact, today, I don't have any plan at all. You would think this is the perfect time to do some baking right?

Not wanting this long weekend to end without any baking at all, I started to think what can I make that's simple, quick, and straight forward. So, I finally decided to make this Blueberry Cotton Cake. I saw this cake when I was blog surfing. From the name of the cake, it's sounded very good. Besides, I'm all about light textured cake, so it qould be perfect to try out this recipe.

As usual, I made some adjustment to the recipe. The end result, I can barely taste the blueberry
flavor, even though I increased the amount of the blueberry preserves to about five times to what the recipe calls for. It would be great if I have some blueberry essence or paste to add into the cake batter.

There's a pattern I notice from my baking experience. If I bake something just for the sake of baking (i.e. I have some spare time so I have to use it for baking since spare time is not easy at all to get for me), the cake wouldn't turn out the way I wanted it to be. It's still completely edible of course, it's just not "perfect" and it always bothers me. But in the other hand, even though I had about 1-2 hours of free time each day, and I would have to do the cake components separately, as long as the cake was planned, it would turn out great. I don't know what the difference is. I'm doing the exact same thing. I guess baking has a lot to do with our emotion (:P). Even if we have all the time in the world but we don't feel like baking, it would affect the cake itself. Call me crazy or anything, but at least it's true for me :)

Here's the recipe:

Blueberry Cotton Cake

50 ml milk
75 g unsalted butter
50 g cake flour
110 g egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla extract
50 g blueberry preserves or jam
a couple drops of violet food coloring
170 g egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
175 g sugar

• Preheat the oven to 325 F. Line two regular loaf pans/one 9-in springform pan or equivalent with parchment paper. I use three mini loaf pans and muffin pan.
  
• Combine the milk and butter in a heat-proof bowl and heat on top of double-boiler to melt the butter.
• While the milk solution is still hot, add the flour all at once and whisk.
  
• Add the egg yolks, vanilla, blueberry preserve, and the food coloring. Stir until well-blended. Set aside.
  
• Whisk the egg white until frothy, then add the cream of tartar.
• Add the sugar a little at a time and keep whisking until it forms soft peak.
• Fold the egg whites into the yolk mixture in addition.
• pour the batter into the parchment-lined baking pan and bake in waterbath for about 40 minutes (may vary depending on the size of the pan and the oven).