Blueberry and coconut milk pound cake

Here I am bringing you another of my experiments in the kitchen and playing with the new toy. This time I wanted to do something with fresh fruit, and I also want to really learn baking methods techniques. So you can imagine how happy I was when I found baking 911's explanations on the process of creaming butter and sugar. They have all kinds of almost scientific descriptions, telling you how during the creaming process what you want is to incorporate air in the butter and how the sugar crystals cut into the fat creating bubbles and trapping air.

  I adapted the recipe from this one, but I decided to play a bit. First of all, vegetable shortening is not very easily found here. My first instinct was to replace it with oil, but I read that it does not work as well. To be honest I could have checked in the American-supermarket but I know for a fact that hydrogenated vegetable oils are packed with trans-fats and rather unhealthy, so I just replaced the shortening with good-old extra butter for lack of a better option. I also switched the milk for coconut milk. It was moist and dense and fluffy and the blueberries were a nice surprise. The boy says it gets a 9, but judging by the large quantities he ate I think it was quite good.

Blueberry and coconut milk Pound Cake -adapted from Sing for your supper who adapted it from Paula Deen

What you need 
200 gr butter
1 cup sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup coconut milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup fresh blueberries (tossed with a little bit of flour, to prevent them from sinking during baking).

What to do
Preheat oven to 175ºC .  Cream butter and slowly add sugar. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating after each addition. Sift dry ingredients together and add to mixer alternately with milk, starting with the flour and ending with the flour. Add vanilla. Fold in the blueberries, carefully. Pour into a greased and floured loaf pan and bake for about an hour, until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.