I'm Back & (Egg Free) Blueberry Bread

Tadaima modorimashita! (literally: I'm back and have returned)

I'm back, alive and kicking! (well..maybe not the kicking bit) Apologies for the long hiatus, but as you may know I was previously in Malaysia and Singapore. From Singapore I jetted off to Japan, the Land of the Rising Sun. I was in Japan for 2.5 weeks and just came back to Melbourne last Friday.

So you're probably wondering.. "what took you so long to get back into blogging?"

Well.. I spent the first 2 days sleeping off the jetlag from Tokyo to Melbourne. I know the distance from Tokyo to Melbourne isn't that far, but I'm kinda pathetic when it comes to flying. In the 1 day that it took to get home from Tokyo (because Singapore Airlines has no direct flight to Melbourne!!), I barely slept more than 3 hours. So pathetic little me needed at least 2 days of full on zzz's to recover. I can only blame the rest of the 3 days before I got back to work to my lack of motivation to do anything but lying in bed and catching up on all the animes that I missed whilst I was away.

Anyway, I won't bore you with the details.. just yet. I did manage to get up to some mischief since I came back. But before that, here's something I prepared earlier...

A colleague at work celebrated her 30th Birthday at work a few days before I left for my holidays. Kathy (my manager) who is good friends with Anita (the birthday girl) asked if I wanted to bring something to the little 30th birthday morning tea party. I said "sure why not.."

My friend Michelle, who works in the same team as Anita is currently watching her food intake as her little baby Mikaela is allergic to a few things. Since Michelle is still breast feeding, whatever she consumes will be passed on to Mikaela. One of the things Mikaela has an allergy to is eggs. Kathy had already said that she would be bringing her faboulous flourless chocolate cake (think of a big double chocolate friand) which I knew contains lots and lots of eggs. I didn't want Michelle to miss out on morning tea, so I decided that I would bring something that was egg free.

Friend Google found me this faboulous and easy recipe, courtesy of Amazon's free book content preview.

Egg free Blueberry Bread

*Adapted from Bakin' without eggs by Rosemary Emro

Ingredients:
3 cups of plain flour
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup castor sugar
1 1/2 cup milk
2 tbsp lime juice
2 tsp lime peel
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 cup blueberries (frozen not thawed)
1 tbsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 180 deg C.
2. Grease a loaf tin with butter
3. In a large bowl with wooden spoon, mix flour, sugar, milk, lemon juice, baking powder, baking soda, an lemon peel, vanilla extract.
4. In a ziplock bag, toss together blueberries and the 1tbsp of flour.*
5. Fold into batter and spoon batter into pre-greased loaf pan.
6. Bake in the oven for 45 - 50mins until skewer comes out clean.
7. Remove from oven, cool for 10mins before removing it from pan.

*Mixing the berries with flour ensures that the berries will not sink to the bottom of the tin during baking.

Notes:
The recipe initially called for lemon juice and lemon peel. But I didn't have any lemons in the fridge, so I subtituted them for lime.
I also substituted part of the caster sugar for brown sugar. I was hoping that it would make the taste of the loaf a bit more caramelly.

Verdict:
The loaf was a big hit! It's so easy to make and I must say the lime peel gave the bread a very refreshing taste. It was a tad sweet for me, so I would probably reduce the amount of sugar in the recipe the next time I make this.

I am also glad that I decided that substitute part of the caster sugar content for brown sugar. It made the bread a bit more moist and gave it a caramelly flavour. In fact, I am considering leaving out the caster sugar all together and just go with the brown sugar idea.

Oh and Michelle, she loved it! Took some home for her husband too. :)