One

Our wonderful daughter turned one last week. It's truly unbelievable - a year went by and now, she's such a big girl already. The past three months have been rather intense, though. I've caught a bad flu twice and Julia's also been sick a couple of times. She's really not a difficult kid, but she's probably not the world's best sleeper. That's why lately, whenever I had some time to myself, I tried to catch up on sleep and there wasn't much time left for anything else. Apologies to all of you for having abandoned my blog for so long. For Julia's first birthday, in any case, there had to be cake! I settled for this lovely blueberry carrot cake. Blueberries and coconut are a nice twist to the traditional carrot cake. They render it moist and fluffy. Julia really liked it. In fact, we all did.

Blueberry Carrot Cake

(from Zucker, Zimt und Liebe)

180g flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

one pinch of salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

50g dessicated coconut

2 eggs

140g canola oil

150g sugar

250g ground carrots

125g blueberries (fresh or frozen, if you use frozen, don't defrost them before using)

Preheat the oven to 160°C. Butter a cake tin (ca. 11x25cm) and line with parchment paper.

In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and coconut. Set aside. In another bowl, combine eggs, oil and sugar and mix with an electric whisk for 3-4 minutes until the batter is smooth. The, add carrots and combine. Fill half your dough into the prepared tin. Roll half of the blueberries in a bit of flour and scatter onto the cake mix. Then fill in the rest of the dough and place the rest of the blueberries on top of it. You might want to press them into the dough a little.

Bake your cake for about 60-70 minutes (with my oven, it took less then 60 minutes so it really depends on your oven). Test with w wooden skewer, whether it's done.

I served this cake just as it was, mostly because Julia is not used to sugar and I did not want to go over the top, but otherwise it would surely be delicious with a cream cheese frosting.

This is, by the way, the kind of cake to make a day or two ahead because it tastes better after some time.