Blueberry and Coconut Crunch Cake

I don't half love the August bank holiday. It's the grown-up equivalent of six glorious weeks of school holidays as a child. Except, obviously, far shorter, with fewer Screwball ice creams, Wagon Wheels and sandy tuna paste Mighty White sandwiches.

With the exception of my husband forgetting to switch off his usual Monday morning work alarm which merrily rang out at 6.20am this morning (we had to have very strong words), today has been a day of doing nothing. I've read the paper, flicked through a few recipe books, drank endless cups of tea. Oh, and baked this. Marvellous.

Biting into the plump, soft crumb of this cake, dotted with juicy, squishy blueberries and topped with the crunch of coconut makes this a rather delicious bank holiday bake.

Blueberry and Coconut Crunch Cake

For the coconut crunch:

75g plain flour
50g chilled butter, cut into cubes
40g brown sugar
40g desiccated coconut

For the cake:

175g softened butter
175g caster sugar
3 large eggs
225g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
Zest of 1 lemon
4 tbsp soured cream
150g (1 punnet) blueberries

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/160C (fan)/Gas Mark 4. Butter and line a 20cm square cake tin. For the crumble: rub together the butter and flour to form gravel sized pieces. Stir in the sugar and coconut until evenly mixed together and set aside.
2. For the cake: beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Gradually add the eggs, one at a time.
3. Mix together the flour, baking powder and lemon zest and stir half into the butter-sugar mixture with half of the soured cream. Beat well together. Add the remaining flour mixture and soured cream and mix well.
4. Stir through the blueberries and spoon into the prepared tin, leavening the top.
5. Sprinkle over the crumble mixture evenly and bake for 50 minutes until risen and a skewer inserted into the centre of cake comes out clean. Cool for ten minutes then remove from the tin and place on a cooling rack to cool completely

Baker's notes...

• I reckon the blueberries could be easily substituted for other summer fruits such as raspberries or chopped plums
• The recipe for the cake has been adapted from BBC Good Food. Originally, it had a cream cheese icing