Small wonder

The heat in Kuala Lumpur has truly been unbearable the last week or so. All I want to do is sit in front of my TV with the air conditioner and fan both on full blast and vegetate.

But, tomorrow is Monday and I brought home some work to do over the weekend ... work I have to "hand in" tomorrow. Gosh,  sometimes it feels like I'm still in school! Needless to say, I haven't done anything. I guess, I'd better get on it.

So, what do I do? Bake. Well, it's cool in the kitchen and I need some inspiration to actually get down to work. Ok, that didn't sound too convincing did it? No matter. At least, I can bring my baked goodies to work and bribe my way out of a shelling (don't judge me.. ;0).

So, onto the dessert on hand. A cream cheese poppy seed cake sounded really good. I had some cream cheese in the fridge and poppy seeds are always aplenty in my pantry so I was set. Perhaps this was meant to be...

The recipe is courtesy of Martha Stewart, though  I altered the presentation of it a little. Martha spreads the creamed cream cheese on top of the cake batter, kind of as a topping to her cakes. I decided to include a layer in between as well, making it a layered cream cheese cake.

What you need is:

1 cup unsalted butter, and a little more for greasing your muffin pan

1.5 cups cake flour, plus  a little more for dusting the muffin pan 1/2 tsp salt

1.5 cups caster sugar

3 large eggs + 2 yolks

1.5 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup whipped cream cheese, room temperature

3 tbsp icing sugar

1 tsp poppy seeds .

Preheat the oven to 160C.

Whisk the Flour and salt and set it aside. Cream the butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Add in the eggs and yolks, one at a time and then the vanilla extract and 1.5 tsp water and continue to mix till well combined.

Add the flour and salt mixture gradually and mix till its all combined into a thick-ish batter.

Grease a 12-hole muffin pan with butter and dust with flour. Spoon the batter onto  the muffin pan till each mould is a quarter full.

Now, put the cream cheese and icing sugar in the bowl of your mixer and mix on low speed till creamy.

Spread a layer of cream on top of the batter.

Spoon another layer of batter till 3/4 full and then spread another layer of the cream cheese on top.

Sprinkle each cake with poppy seed. Bake for 30 mins or till tester comes out clean.