Like Strawberry Wine...

On my trip to Turkey a few weeks ago, I stayed one night in an adorable old stone hotel, called the Taş Otel in the town of Alaçati (Ah-la-cha-tuh).  Every afternoon they serve their guests homemade cakes and çay (black tea).  When I went into my room, there was a cookbook laid out on the bed.  What?!  To an avid baker, this was basically the best gift ever.  Who needs mini soaps or lotions or a mint on their pillow?  Give me the cake. 

So, last weekend I was up in Cape Cod visiting my parents, relaying the details of my trip to them – seemed like the perfect time to test out one of these recipes.  My mom is also a baker and my parents love sweets.  My mom picked this recipe for us (and wrote down another to try later herself).  This cake was super easy to whip up.  My dad is allergic to nuts so we left them out, and frankly, I think the texture of the cake was a bit too soft to handle them.   

I made this in a loaf pan thinking it would have the texture of banana or zucchini bread, but it’s actually much lighter and fluffier than that.  The loaf pan was okay, but I think next time I’d use a 9" round or 9x9" square pan and eat this with a fork.  Loaf pan/round pan/nuts/no nuts – do what you prefer, but definitely give this a try.  The orange flavor comes through nicely but isn’t overpowering, and the ricotta provides that perfectly satisfying crumby texture.  No icing necessary.

And of course - when in Turkey, stay at the Taş!  Alacati Tas Otel

Ingredients

125g unsalted butter, softened

225g sugar

3 eggs

450g AP flour

2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp vanilla

Grated zest of 2 oranges (I used 1)

2 spoonfuls orange marmalade (I used 2 rounded Tbsp)

100ml orange juice

100g chopped walnuts (I omitted)

125g ricotta (I used lowfat)

Instructions

Bet that got your attention.  Get your minds out of the gutter, people!  I’m talking about spiced pecans, and they really are from Joe Biden.  Well, more likely Dr./Mrs./Jill, but nevertheless, this recipe was submitted by the VP and his wife to Food Network Magazine a few years ago.  I’ve tried a couple different variations of these in the past, but was in search of something new this year.  And if you know me at all, you know I love Joe B., so I was happy to give these a Go.

This recipe comes together very easily.  The baking takes a while, but after having tried stove-top versions, I think the flavor is better when you bake them.  The flavor of the nuts deepens as they roast, and that’s definitely a good thing.

I did tweak the spices a little.  I cut back on the cumin a tiny bit, increased the cinnamon slightly, added a little brown sugar with the white, and threw in a few shakes of nutmeg as well.  There is plenty of cayenne in here, so even with my sweet additions, these still have a kick!  They are a great holiday party snack or addition to your cheese platter.  I’ll warn you that if you can handle the heat, they are quite addictive, so go ahead and double that batch.  Way to go, Joe (and Jill)!

You can find the recipe here: 

Sweet and Spicy Pecans

Note - you can substitute any kind of nut you want here.  I've tried similar recipes with walnuts and those are also delicious. 

How is it possible?  In 4 years of writing this blog I have never posted a recipe for a plain old chocolate chip cookie - ever.  They’ve always had peanut butter or pretzels or oatmeal or something else taking away from that tried and true pure Chocolate. Chip. Cookie.

Obviously that had to change, and stat.  And I decided to go big…Baking GALS Round 33 gets these Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies.  And lucky them.  Forget those old school Nestle Tollhouse, or god forbid…Chips Ahoy (yikes!).   This should forever be your go-to recipe.  These particular cookies are huge,  I mean seriously honkin’ but you can always make them whatever size you like.  From the brown sugar to the extra yolk and the melted butter, these are some of the richest, most flavorful I’ve ever had.  The recipe calls for semi-sweet chips.  I felt like a big cookie called for a bigger piece of chocolate, so I went with chunks and I think it worked well.  Let’s get down to business so you can go hit the kitchen…like now.

Don't worry - I ate this one.

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups, plus 2 tablespoons All-Purpose flour
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
12 Tbsp. (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted and cooled until warm
1 cup packed light or dark brown sugar (I used ½ of each)
½ cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, plus 1 egg yolk
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1-1 ½ cups semisweet chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS:

1. Adjust the oven racks to the upper- and lower-middle positions and heat the oven to 325º.  Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper or spray them with nonstick cooking spray.

2. Whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl; set aside.

3. Either by hand or with an electric mixer, mix the butter and sugars until thoroughly blended.  Beat in the egg, yolk, and vanilla until combined.  Add the dry ingredients and beat at low speed just until combined.  Stir in the chips to taste.

4. Roll a scant ¼ cup of the dough into a ball.  Hold the dough ball with the fingertips of both hands and pull into 2 equal halves.  Rotate the halves 90 degrees and, with jagged surfaces facing up, join the halves together at their base, again forming a single ball, being careful not to smooth the dough's uneven surface. (I skipped that part and used a ¼ cup cookie scoop)  Place the formed dough balls on the prepared baking sheets, jagged surface up, spacing them 2 ½ inches apart.

5. Bake until the cookies are light golden brown and the outer edges start to harden yet the centers are still soft and puffy, 15 to 18 minutes, rotating the baking sheets front to back and top to bottom halfway through the baking time.  Cool the cookies on the sheets for about 10 min.  Remove the cooled cookies from the baking sheets with a wide metal spatula.

Recipe adapted from Baking Illustrated

Bebopareebop Rhubarb Pie.  Ever heard of it?  How about “Mama’s little baby loves rhubarb, rhubarb…”  Still no?  Ha – well, it’s not surprising.  This little ditty is from Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion – a show on NPR my parents would religiously listen to on Saturday evenings.  I don’t remember when I heard it, but it was definitely more than a decade ago (yikes!)…and I think it was only the second time I had ever heard of rhubarb.  The first was on a family vacation in Nova Scotia when my dad’s aunt made a rhubarb pie.  Since I was probably about 10 years old, I’m pretty sure I turned my nose up and didn’t try a bite.  Funny how both of these things have stuck with me though, huh?

Well, now with my much more sophisticated and refined palate (ha!), I have baked with it a few times and so far, liked everything I’ve made.  Rhubarb is such an interesting vegetable.  It looks like and has the consistency of pretty celery, but almost tastes like a really tart apple, and despite its tartness, is almost always used in sweet recipes rather than savory.  This recipe is obviously no exception.  I am on a strawberry rampage this summer, so I was excited to try this – it gave me a chance to take what I know and love and add something less familiar.  By the way, did you know that rhubarb leaves are toxic??  True story.  Remove and discard please!

Anyway, on to the bars.  I have a coworker who likes to try my new recipes so I brought her one for an opinion….to quote her exactly, “Oh my god, I think this is the best thing you’ve ever made.”  WOW – now that’s a bold claim, especially since she’s had my sour cream coffee cake which I swear by.  Not a minute later, she shouted down the hall, “I want these for my birthday!”  Ha, yes maam, done and done.  I’m convinced it was the addition of my go-to secret ingredient (a spice used often in Scandinavian and Indian cuisine).  I add a little to my apple pies too and it totally brings it up a notch.  Perhaps you can figure out what I’m talking about, but if not – well, some things just need to stay a secret. J    

Here are the details and step-by-step pics:

Ingredients:

Potbelly.  Who would have thought they would be my cookie-baking nemesis?!  I certainly didn’t.  I figured it would be some great artisanal baker, but no.  I’ve heard from several people over the years about how amaaazing their cookies and ice cream-cookie sandwiches are….blah, blah, blah.

Challenge accepted and nemesis no more, my friends.  I think I have finally conquered their most popular cookie – the oatmeal chocolate chip, of course.

Like a true professional, I did my research over time.  I made tweaks to a recipe I already know and love, I tried a couple new recipes from other blogs, I bought a Potbelly cookie and tried to figure out if there was some secret spice I was missing (Anyone see that Friends episode with Monica dissecting what turned out to be a Nestle Tollhouse recipe??  Yup, same.).  I even emailed Potbelly’s customer service and asked them about their recipe.  I’ll get to their response in a sec.  But finally, I got the golden ticket one day when a weekly email from King Arthur Flour showed up in my inbox featuring their version…bingo.  I should have thought to go to them first.

Here is their recipe:

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup light brown sugar, packed

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg, at room temperature

1 large egg yolk, at room temperature

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

2 cups All Purpose Flour

1 cup quick-cooking or old-fashioned oats 

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon kosher salt or 3/4 teaspoon regular table salt

3 cups semisweet chocolate chips

·8 ounces unsalted butter, at room temperature

·7 1/2 ounces light brown sugar

·3 1/2 ounces granulated sugar

·1 large egg, at room temperature

·1 large egg yolk, at room temperature

·1/2 ounce vanilla extract

·8 1/2 ounces King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

·3 1/2 ounces quick-cooking or old-fashioned oats

·1 teaspoon baking powder

·1 teaspoon baking soda

·1 teaspoon kosher salt or 3/4 teaspoon regular table salt

·18 ounces semisweet chocolate chips

·227g unsalted butter, at room temperature

·213g light brown sugar

·99g granulated sugar

·1 large egg, at room temperature

·1 large egg yolk, at room temperature

·14g vanilla extract

·241g King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

·99g quick-cooking or old-fashioned oats

·1 teaspoon baking powder

·1 teaspoon baking soda

·1 teaspoon kosher salt or 3/4 teaspoon regular table salt

·510g semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

As good as this recipe is, I still make my own adjustments to get the texture I want – I use jumbo eggs instead of large, I add some extra oats (about 1/2-3/4 cup), perhaps a pinch more baking soda or powder.  I will say that their use of a full tablespoon of vanilla is unique – don’t skimp on that, it makes all the difference.  And whatever you do, make sure its pure vanilla extract and not imitation.  Ick.

As for Potbelly’s customer service response….well first, I checked their website and it just says that a particular recipe is used and they are baked fresh daily.  Ok fine, but I wanted more than that.  I asked if the dough is actually made on sight or if they just get dough that they bake at each location.  I also asked if the recipe was Potbelly’s or from a third party bakery.  The response (which to their credit, I did receive within 24 hours) was, “They are baked fresh each day from dough which is made according to a Potbelly recipe.”  Hmmm, they get kudos for using their own recipe, but this is still vague enough, and I’ve watched enough “How It’s Made” in my day to guess that this dough arrives at each store in big gallon buckets (likely with added sodium and preservatives) and just gets scooped out and plopped onto baking sheets.  Nothing horribly wrong with that I suppose, but for all the hype they get, you’d hope that there’s at least some skill and passion involved.  Next time you get the craving, come to my kitchen instead….to borrow from Seinfeld – admittedly the context is a bit different – they’re real and they’re spectacular!!

**Note** – I made these for my Baking GALS Round 31.  While I would love to devour them all myself, I thought it best to get them out of the house immediately and spare my figure.  And no, I did not skip Rounds 29 and 30 – I made repeat cookie and scone recipes the past couple months and therefore didn’t bother boring you with the details.  No worries, the troops were fed!

After almost 2 ½ years of sending baked goods overseas, it’s difficult to come up with something I know will be delicious, but that I haven’t already sent.  I flag tons of recipes to try out, but a lot of them likely wouldn’t survive the shipping (those brownies last month were definitely a risk!).  This time I decided to go with my old trusty White Chocolate Cranberry cookies (Road Cookies) , but with a twist to make them new again…

I omitted the cranberries and instead added both milk and dark chocolate chips to the white.  I left out the nutmeg, but included ¼ tsp of the cinnamon for that warm “Mexican chocolate” touch.  I think they turned out great….in fact, I may make them a new staple on www.bakeridc.com.  I just hope my guy this month likes chocolate!

I have a couple new scone recipes churning in my head – next month I may have to go that route – stay tuned….

*Also, if you feel so inclined, I have a feeling some chopped up bacon would taste absolutely amazing in these!

Grab a spoon.  Yes, a spoon.  These brownies are probably the most chocolaty and decadent, and definitely the gooiest, that I have ever had.  I am generally a brownie purist – no chips, no nuts, no chunks of any kind…however adding a layer of delicious caramel in the middle?  Bring it.

They are in fact so gooey, that I had to remove all the edge pieces first, then use a super thin spatula to even get the others off the parchment paper without them completely just falling apart into a big blob of goo.  Not that that would be a bad thing if I was just eating them myself, but I had to ship these out!  I am just crossing my fingers that they arrive in Afghanistan in some semblance of the proper brownie shape.  I did forewarn the recipient that he may just need to attack them with a spoon….preferably with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

For those who may not be familiar with dulce de leche, it is basically just caramel, but made a little differently – you can make it by boiling a can of sweetened condensed milk for several hours (and hours and hours).  Open the can, and voilà – caramel!  However, I took the easy route and found this in the Latin/Hispanic section at the grocery store.

These may be a mess (and maybe I used more caramel than I should have – oops!), but they are a mess that is 110% worth it.  Make them - you can thank me later.

*You could always try with this pan too – maybe that would help: Edge Brownie Pan

Recipe from Brown Eyed Baker (www.browneyedbaker.com)

INGREDIENTS:

1¼ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons dark unsweetened cocoa powder
11 ounces dark chocolate, coarsely chopped (I used dark chocolate chips)
1 cup unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes
1½ cups granulated sugar
½ cup light brown sugar
5 eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
¾ cup dulce de leche

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter the sides and bottom of a glass or light-colored metal 9x13-inch pan. Line the bottom with a sheet of parchment paper, and butter the parchment; set aside.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt and cocoa powder; set aside.

3. Place the chocolate and butter in the bowl of a double boiler set over a pan of simmering water, and stir occasionally until the chocolate and butter are completely melted and combined. Turn off the heat, but keep the bowl over the water of the double boiler, and add both sugars. Whisk until completely combined and remove the bowl from the pan. The mixture should be at room temperature.

4. Add three eggs to the chocolate mixture and whisk until just combined. Add the remaining eggs and whisk until just combined. Add the vanilla and stir until combined. Do not overbeat the batter at this stage, or your brownies will be cakey.

5. Sprinkle the flour mixture over the chocolate. Using a spatula, fold the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until there is just a trace amount of the flour mixture still visible.

6. Pour half of the brownie mixture into the pan and smooth the top with a spatula. Drizzle about ¾ cup of the dulce de leche over the brownie layer in a zigzag pattern, making sure the dulce de leche doesn't come in contact with the edges of the pan or it will burn. Use an offset spatula to spread the dulce de leche evenly across the brownie layer, leaving about a ½-inch border around the edges. In heaping spoonfuls, scoop the rest of the brownie batter over the caramel layer. Smooth the brownie batter gently to cover the dulce de leche layer.

7. Bake the brownies for 30 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through the baking time, and check to make sure the brownies are completely done by sticking a toothpick into the center of the pan. The brownies are done when the toothpick comes out with a few moist crumbs. Remove the brownies from the oven and place the pan on a wire rack; allow to cool completely to room temperature before cutting and serving. The brownies can be stored, tight wrapped at room temperature, for up to 4 days.

I know, biscotti??  Believe me, this isn’t the super dry, crack-your-teeth hard, tasteless piece of kindling you get in lots of coffee shops.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t even give that stuff a second glance.  Yes, this is still a dry crunchy cookie, but there is so much flavor from the vanilla, and the texture is still tender enough to bite regularly….none of that hold it off to the side and cock your head type of biting.  Of course I had to make this festive for the season.  White, red and green sparkling sugars did the trick.  So pretty!

Go ahead, pour yourself some coffee or tea, settle in with a good book or movie, grab a slice (or 2 – trust me) and get ready to enjoy.  Dunking is optional.

Ingredients

Recipe adapted from King Arthur Flour (www.kingarthurflour.com)

6 Tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature

⅔ cup granulated sugar

½ tsp salt

2-3 tsp vanilla extract (I used 3)

¼ tsp almond extract (I omitted)

1 ½ tsp baking powder

2 large eggs

2 cups AP Flour (I used 1 cup white whole wheat/1 cup AP)

1 cup mini cinnamon chips (my addition)

Coarse sparkling sugar for sprinkling

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350º.  In a medium mixing bowl, add the butter, sugar, salt, vanilla and baking powder.  Beat on low speed just until combined and smooth.  Add the eggs and beat at low/medium speed until well mixed.  The mixture may look slightly curdled – that’s ok, I just beat for another few seconds until it looked smooth again. 

Add the flour one cup at a time, as well as whatever add-ins you want – in this case I added ½ cup of the cinnamon chips.  Mix on low until just combined.  Add the remaining flour and chips and again mix just until combined, making sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl to incorporate all of the flour.

I happen to have a biscotti pan (about an 11½”x 5½” loaf pan) – if you have one of these, just scrape the dough into the greased pan and spread evenly.  If you don’t have a pan about this size, form a loaf on a parchment lined cookie sheet.  The loaf should be about 11x5 and about 1” thick.  Sprinkle the top with sugar and bake for about 20 minutes, until lightly browned.

Remove from oven and lower oven temp to 325º.  Let biscotti rest in loaf shape for 5 minutes.  Slice loaf in ½”-¾” wide slices and lay cut side down on a parchment lined cookie sheet.  Bake for about 12 minutes, then flip each slice and bake for about 12-14 minutes more until dried out and nicely browned.  Transfer to cooling rack to cool completely.  

*This recipe suggests up to 2 cups of add-ins such as chips, nuts or dried fruits.  I recommend starting with 1 cup and seeing how it looks – 1 cup of chips was plenty for me.

What’s your oldest memory of eggnog?  Is it something you had with your family during the holidays?  Or still do?  I remember early on in elementary school, our class made a cookbook and one of my classmates submitted a recipe for homemade eggnog.  I’d probably had it at some point before this, but making it from that recipe is the first experience that comes to mind.  I loved it right from the start.  Of course that wasn’t the adult version, which I also am a big fan of!

So, the big question with eggnog in baked goods is, will the flavor actually come through?  I’ve made eggnog scones before and I remember them being good, but not really having a strong eggnog flavor.  Maybe I used a light variety or needed to add more, who knows – but after making these cookies, I’ll be playing around with those scones again as there was no shortage of flavor here!

This recipe actually called for the addition of dark chocolate chunks.  I’m sure that is also delicious, but eggnog to me just screams nutmeg, so I omitted the chocolate and added some nutmeg and cinnamon chips instead.  To me, they are absolutely perfect like this, but if you prefer chocolate, just sub out the same amount that I used for the cinnamon chips.

Recipe adapted from Brown Eyed Baker (www.browneyedbaker.com) 

Ingredients

1 cup + 2 Tbsp AP flour

½ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

½ tsp ground nutmeg

6 Tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature

½ cup + 2 Tbsp granulated sugar

¼ cup Eggnog (light not recommended)

1 egg yolk

½ tsp vanilla extract

½ cup mini cinnamon chips

Instructions

Preheat oven to 300º.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg; set aside.

Using an electric mixer, in a large bowl, beat butter and sugar at medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add the eggnog, egg yolk, and vanilla.  Continue to beat at medium speed until completely mixed, about 2 minutes.

Reduce mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients in two batches, mix until just combined.  Using a rubber scraper, fold in the cinnamon chips and make sure all flour is incorporated.

Using a small or medium cookie scoop, drop dough onto the cookie sheets about 2 inches apart.  Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the edges are set and just starting to turn a golden brown and the centers spring back when touched lightly.

Remove from oven and let rest on the cookie sheets for 1 minute then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.  Store in an air-tight container.

**Note 1** I used a medium cookie scoop and this recipe made about 18 cookies – therefore you may want to double it!

**Note 2**  Order a batch and let me do the work - check out Bakeri and let me know what I can make for you!

Back to Baking GALS!  August is always a hairy month for me in the kitchen – I feel like I’m running around non-stop the whole month between vacations and generally just spending as much time outdoors as possible…not to mention just being exhausted when I get home from work after being so busy doing catch-up work when I actually am in the office.  At any rate, I got my shipment out for September and this was a good one, in my humble opinion.

If I haven’t mentioned it, I’m Norwegian (well, nearly half anyway) and my mom being very proud of that heritage has trickled down to me.  Enough so that I’ve recently even started a little bakery business called what else, Bakeri – the Norwegian word for bakery. I’ll do a full post about the business very soon so stay tuned (and start thinking of what you’d like to order!), but as I’m creating the menu, I of course need to make sure I have a couple Norwegian staples on it right?  Enter these pepper cookies.  Scandinavians like things with a little kick – think of all those Swedish ginger snaps that are out there…slow, warm heat.  Same idea here.  Mix some black pepper with the favorite ingredient of cardamom and again, slow, warm heat.  Sweet, savory and spicy all at once – it’s unique and delicious.  I found this recipe while searching online and I’m declaring it a keeper!

Recipe adapted from Embassy of Norway, Washington DC

Ingredients

1 1/8 cups butter

1 cup granulated sugar

¼ cup heavy whipping cream

1 tsp baking soda

3 ¼ cup AP flour

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground black pepper

1 ½ tsp ground cardamom

1 tsp baking powder

Water

*Note, it is not an omission – this recipe does not call for eggs.

Instructions

I spent the last unofficial weekend of summer at a beach house in the Outer Banks with several friends.  It was a great time.  We all contributed food for the weekend and one thing I brought was Trail Mix.  I love the Costco brand – I don’t like very many types of nuts and this one has all the ones I do like…cashews, almonds and peanuts.  Add raisins and M&M’s and bingo – an awesome concoction.  However, when there are 6 people bringing food, you have lots of leftovers.  I think I came home with about 498 of the 500 cups in that bag so I am trying to figure out what to do with it all, short of laying in a pile of it and eating my way out...though I’m not sure I’d have time for the exercise routine I’d need to counteract that.

In scrounging around the kitchen I found a bag of marshmallows from a camping trip a couple months ago.  That made me think of Rice Krispies treats, but of course I don’t just have Rice Krispies lying around.  Now Kashi, on the other hand, well I always have a couple varieties of that.  And hey, no harm in making a slightly healthier version of the classic, right? 

So here’s the mixture, and yeah, it works – it’s quite good, almost like a granola bar - almost.  Now only 496.5 cups to go…

Ingredients

3 Tbsp butter

1 bag Jet-Puffed marshmallows

4 ½ cups Kashi Puffs Cereal

1 ½ cups Trail Mix – I used Kirkland brand from Costco

Instructions

Melt butter over medium-low heat.  Add marshmallows and stir to coat.  Stir occasionally until completed melted.  Add cereal and trail mix and stir until everything is coated in the marshmallow mixture.  Spread evenly into a greased 9”x13” pan and let cool completely (you can put them in the fridge for a little to speed things up).  Cut into squares and serve.

Is it me or has fruit been extra good this year?  I swear, for whatever reason, this summer I just can’t get enough.  My 100% made-up unscientific theory is that everything has been super juicy and delicious due to all the rain in the area.  It’s not too much so that the fruit is supersaturated, but it’s not too little to produce small tasteless fruit….it’s been juuussst right.  Seriously, I should have documented how much I’ve spent on watermelon, strawberries and blueberries alone.  Not to mention all the plums, nectarines and pineapple.  It’s all made for some damn fine fruit salads for lunch throughout the work week.  I’ll be sad when the season comes to an end, which is pretty much any day now.  I can only hope the winter citrus will be good enough to tide me over until next summer.

Since I couldn’t even go a week without it, I bought a bunch of berries at a store on the way to visit my parents in Cape Cod.  The strawberries turned into the scones I wrote about recently and the blueberries – well here’s what happened to them…

I found this recipe for a blueberry buckle – it called for 4 cups of blueberries – yowza!  Usually recipes use 1.5-2 cups of fruit, so I was excited to try this one and see how it turned out.  Basically there is just enough batter to hold everything together, which works for me.  Makes it more appropriate to eat cake for breakfast this way!  

Unbeknownst to me, making this for my parents yielded a story I’d never heard (nor had my mom, even after 47 years!) from my dad about the first time he ever had, and fell in love with, blueberry cake.  A cute story about childhood antics while working a blueberry stand…long story short, a load of berries ended up on the ground and therefore couldn’t be sold, so his mom cleaned them up and made a cake.  This is one of the reasons I love food, not only does it bring people together, but it also invokes heartfelt memories.  Someday I’ll pass that story on to the next generation of my family.

This cake is easy to prepare and really tasty.  The three of us downed half of it straight away.  With some scrambled eggs, it made for a delicious breakfast.  Make it before all the local blueberries disappear for the year!

Ingredients

Topping:

½ cup AP flour

½ cup light brown sugar

2 Tbsp granulated sugar

¼ tsp ground cinnamon

Pinch of salt

Pinch of nutmeg (my addition)

¼ cup unsalted butter, softened and cut into pieces

Cake:

1 ½ cups AP flour (I used ¾ cup AP/¾ cup whole wheat)

1 ½ tsp baking powder

10 Tbsp unsalted butter, softened

⅔ cup granulated sugar

½ tsp salt

½ tsp grated lemon zest

1 ½ tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs at room temperature (removing from fridge when you start assembling everything is fine)

4 cups fresh blueberries

Instructions