Blueberry Tea Cake

I've told myself many times not to buy something just because it's on sale. Although the mantra has helped me quite a bit, unfortunately, once in a while, I still fall for the 'sale' trap....  Two weeks ago, before I even used up the blueberries to make Blueberry Scones, I bought 2 more punnets of blueberries just because they're on sale.... How can I not buy them when 2 punnets cost just $5! 

Just to make sure that the impulse purchase was worth it, I had to bake something  with them,  right...? So I flipped through Better Homes and Gardens Old Fashioned Baking & decided on a tea cake. (Incidentally, I bought the book for just $2 at the NLB book sale recently, but (just to reassure myself) buying the book was justified because I love baking & from my experience, recipes from Better Homes and Gardens  are very reliable. And of course, the book was dirt cheap!! Haha!)

I adapted the Strawberry Ripple Tea Cake recipe to bake my Blueberry Tea Cake. The major change I made was replacing the frozen sweetened strawberries or red raspberries in the recipe with fresh blueberries. I  added 1 tbsp of water when cooking the blueberry filling because the filling was very thick, maybe because I used fresh blueberries. As I'm typing the recipe, I realised the recipe calls for sweetened berries but I didn't add any sugar to my blueberry filling. So my cake filling turned out slightly tart. Overall, this cake is a  keeper... it's rich but not too sweet & there's a distinctive flavour which I really like.. must be the buttermilk.

Blueberry Tea Cake
Adapted from Better Homes and Gardens Old Fashioned Baking

2 punnets fresh blueberry - the original recipe uses 10 oz package frozen, sweetened, sliced strawberries or red raspberries, thawed.
1 tbsp water (I added.)
1 tbsp corn starch
2-1/4 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup cold butter (I used 190g)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
1 beaten egg
3/4 cup buttermilk or sour milk (I used buttermilk.)

1. Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C.
2. Grease and flour 10×2 round tart pan with a removable bottom or 11x7x1-1/2 inch baking pan, set aside.
3. In a small saucepan, stir together berries (undrained if frozen, and add sugar to taste here if they weren’t previously sweetened) and corn starch till well combined. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly, remove from heat. Set aside.
4. In a large bowl, combine flour and sugar. Cut in butter till mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Set 1/2 cup flour mixture aside for crumb topping. Into the remaining flour/sugar/butter mixture, stir baking powder, baking soda and salt & mix well. Make a well in the center. Combine egg and buttermilk in a small bowl. Add all at once to the dry mixture. Stir just until moistened.
5. Spread 2/3 of the batter over bottom and up one inch of the sides of the prepared pan. Spread filling over the batter. Spoon remaining batter in small mounds over the filling. Sprinkle with remaining flour/sugar/butter mixture.
6. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted near center comes out clean. Cool in pan on a rack for 15 minutes. Remove from pan with removable bottom if using or leave in baking pan. Serve warm.