Tag Archives: blueberries

THE HOME BAKERS COLLECTIVE: MARCH PROJECT

Posted in Desserts, Desserts, Sweets, Home Bakers Collective by

If you don’t know what the Home Bakers Collective is all about, please read my post about it with a click here. This month’s challenge was… surprise surprise…. conceived by yours truly! In case you did not notice, we are following the painful path of elimination through the Great American Baking Show that aired in December. Seems like ages ago, as we face  difficult, truly stressful times. At some point I did not know if we could even meet this challenge. Things degenerated too quickly, nobody could find flour and many other baking ingredients were scarce (and still are), but my baking  buddies stood up to the task and here we are. The brief is: bake a pie to say goodbye to winter, dedicated or inspired by someone you miss. Mine is a Blueberry Pie, and I dedicate it to my stepson Alex. More about it on comments after the recipe.

Note added after publication: our next challenge, designed by Tanya, will be…. DONUTS!  Any shape, any kind… If you’d like to join, bake some and we’ll soon figure out a way to share them all…

BLUEBERRY-BERGAMOT PIE
(from the Bewitching Kitchen, inspired by several sources)

for pie crust:
200 g cold, unsalted butter
1 large egg
1 teaspoon white wine vinegar
85 g ice-cold water
350 g all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
egg wash (1 egg beaten with a teaspoon of water)

for the filling:
3 pints fresh blueberries.
Finely grated zest of 1 orange, plus 1 tablespoon fresh orange juice.
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons cornstarch.
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon.
1 drop food-grade bergamot essential oil (optional)

Make the pie crust. Mix the water, egg and vinegar in a bowl, reserve in the fridge. Add the flour, salt and sugar to the bowl of a food processor. Pulse a few seconds to mix, but just a few seconds, you do not want to heat up the ingredients.

Add the very cold butter in pieces and pulse briefly to form clumps of butter the size of peas. Turn the processor on and add the cold water/egg mixture through the opening of the lid. Process until the dough starts to come together, then stop immediately.  Grab the dough and press it as a disk over plastic wrap.  Reserve in the fridge for one hour.

Divide the dough in two parts, one slightly bigger than the other (to form the bottom crust). Roll the bigger portion as a round with about 3mm in thickness. Drape it over the pan and reserve in the fridge while you prepare the filling. Roll the second portion in the same thickness to cover the top. Using small cookie cutters make a design on the top if desired, and cut decorations from the same piece of dough. Place them in the freezer.

Heat the oven to 350F.

Make the filling. In a medium bowl, gently toss together blueberries, orange zest and juice, sugar, cornstarch, salt, cinnamon, and bergamot oil.  Pour the  mixture over the bottom crust, dot with butter and cover with the frozen disk. Brush the surface with egg wash.

Bake until the filling begins to bubble out of the vents and the top crust is golden brown, about 45 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool for 1 to 2 hours to let the filling set before serving.

ENJOY!

to print the recipe, click here

Comments: I had a lot of fun making this pie, even if compared to the fancy designs made by serious pie artists, mine was pretty amateurish. I dedicated this pie to my stepson Alex. There are two food items that I will always associate with him, because he loves them so much. Blueberries and crab. No, not together, he is a man of fine taste… 😉  When he lived with us as a young teenager and blueberries were in season, we always kept many little containers in the fridge, so that he could have his blueberry fix with every meal. Steamed crab legs were another favorite of his, our dinners would take a long time, as the three of us went through an impressive number of crab legs. Unfortunately, we don’t see him as often as we would like. He is a physician in New York, a resident in Interventional Radiology working right in the center of the coronavirus pandemic. We wish we lived closer and that he could have enjoyed this pie, sitting right at our table with his adorable partner Courtnie…

Please make sure to stop by The Bakers Collective to see what my fellow tent-bakers did for this challenge. Not everyone could join, for obvious reasons. Life has been stressful for the whole human population. It is a strange way to feel connected to the whole world, and I hope that this nightmare will have a happy ending soon. Be well, be safe, be healthy and STAY HOME.

ONE YEAR AGO: Another Twisted Sister of the Shepherd’s Pie

TWO YEARS AGO: Cashew Chicken, My Way

THREE YEARS AGO: Two Deliciously Simple Salads

FOUR YEARS AGO: In My Kitchen, April 2016

FIVE YEARS AGO: Spring has Sprung with Suzanne Goin

SIX YEARS AGO: Chai Brownies

SEVEN YEARS AGO: Pomegranate-Molasses Glazed Carrots

EIGHT YEARS AGO: Braised Brisket with Bourbon-Peach Glaze

NINE YEARS AGO: The Real Vodka Sauce

TEN YEARS AGO: Spring Rolls on a Spring Day

 

BLUEBERRY CRUMBLE COFFEE CAKE

Posted in Desserts, Desserts, Sweets by

As I mentioned before, one great food blogger I follow is Helen Fletcher. She is an expert baker, and also a natural teacher. Each of her posts is a detailed tutorial that allows even the most insecure baker (Sally raises her hand…)  to feel comfortable to face a little baking challenge. A few months ago she blogged on a Blueberry Coffee Cake that had a nice twist to it, the inclusion of a crumb topping.  I was intrigued. It turned out as a delicious, moist and tender cake, one that prompted Phil to grant me an unexpected compliment: “this is exactly the type of cake my Aunt Mildred would bake and we loved so much!”  Can you grasp the full impact of those simple words put together? Me and his Aunt Mildred, joined in the same level of cake baking.  I had to hold myself on the side of the counter top, my knees went a bit weak as my blood pressure dropped from the sheer shock of it. And then… then I could not stop smiling.

EASY BLUEBERRY CRUMB COFFEE CAKE
(from Pastries Like a Pro)

for the cake:
2 + 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, divided (315 grams)
1 cup sugar (200 grams)
3/4 cup butter, cold (170 grams)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 egg
1/2 cup buttermilk
9 ounces frozen blueberries (255 grams)
for the lemon glaze:
1 cup powdered sugar (130 grams or 4 1/2 ounces)
3 tablespoons lemon juice (plus more if needed)

Heat the oven to 350°F. Spray a 9″ cheesecake pan or springform pan and set aside.

Combine 2 cups flour and sugar in the bowl of a mixer. Cut the butter into small pieces and add it to the bowl. Mix on low at first until most of the butter has been cut in. Raise the mixer and continue to mixing until crumbs form. Aim for fine, not large crumbs.

Remove 1/3 of the crumbs (about 210 grams) and set them aside. They will be used for the topping.

Add the remaining 1/4 cup flour, baking soda, egg and buttermilk to the remainder of the crumbs in the bowl. Beat on low to bring it together then on medium to smooth it out. Stir half of the frozen blueberries into the batter. Spread it evenly in the pan.

Place the second half of the blueberries over the top of the batter. Sprinkle the reserved crumbs over the blueberries. Bake for 50 to 55 minutes until a tester comes out clean. The crumbs will be light in color. My cake took a little more than 1 hour in the oven.

Let cool before removing from the pan.

For the glaze, combine the powdered sugar and lemon juice in a bowl and stir until smooth and with the right consistency to be drizzled. Place the cake on a rack over waxed or parchment paper for easy clean up. Drizzle one way,turn the cake and drizzle in the opposite direction. Allow the glaze to set before serving.

ENJOY!

to print the recipe, click here

Comments: for a step by step tutorial, make sure to stop by Helen’s site using the link I provided under the recipe’s title. Once you pour the cake batter in the pan, it will seem as if it’s not enough.  Don’t worry, just go on and follow the recipe as specified. I suppose my glaze could have been slightly thicker so that it would stay more as a drizzle, but even if a bit thin, the taste was not compromised.

As usual, this was shared with our co-workers on a Monday morning. It is one of my favorite things to do, bake something on Sunday and share with our departmental colleagues. The cake was gone before 9:30hs, which is an excellent indication of approval. But, truth is, I could not ask for a better compliment than that of my beloved husband, the resident cake-critic, the one who was raised by bakers probably as talented as… Helen Fletcher!

Helen, thanks so much for another great recipe, I now need to take a deep breath and make your Portokalopita! If anyone is puzzled by the name, go visit her site, it is a cake that uses phyllo dough in the batter!  Can you imagine that?  Mind blowing!

ONE YEAR AGO: Fresh Strawberry Yogurt Bundt Cake

TWO YEARS AGO: Quinoa Salad with Red Grapes and Avocado

THREE YEARS AGO: Strawberry Coffee Cake

FOUR YEARS AGO: Lemon-Poppy Seed Muffins

FIVE YEARS AGO: Mascarpone Brownies

SIX YEARS AGO: Salmon Tacos

SEVEN YEARS AGO: Cinnamon Turban Bread

EIGHT YEARS AGO: Summertime Gratin

 

 

 

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SECRET RECIPE CLUB: BUTTERMILK-BLUEBERRY BREAKFAST CAKE

Posted in Breakfast & Brunch, Desserts, Sweets, Secret Recipe Club by

This semester is shaping up as one of the busiest for us. I even flirted with the idea of sitting out of the Secret Recipe Club for a month, but I would be miserable watching everyone else posting their tasty recipes and not joining the party. No, not skipping it. My approach then is to jump on the assignment pretty much the day I get the email, on a rapid-fire stalking mode.  The blog I got this month was “Making Miracles“, hosted by Rebekah. I urge you to read her About page, she has lived in many places in the US, including Alaska, but also spent a little over two  years in Senegal back in 1995. A fascinating experience, even if at times not easy. If the subject of surrogacy interests you, she has a lot of experience with it as a surrogate mom herself, and also from helping families reach their dream of having a baby. That’s what the title of her blog, “Making Miracles” is all about.

I decided to go back to sweets for this month’s assignment, and had blueberries on my mind.  Two recipes were begging to be featured, her Blueberry Coffee Cake Muffins, and her Buttermilk-Blueberry Breakfast Cake.  The husband spoke. Breakfast cake won. So here it is!

BlueberryCoffeeCake

BUTTERMILK-BLUEBERRY BREAKFAST CAKE
(from Rebekah’s Making Miracles)

½ cup butter, room temperature
2 tsp lemon zest
3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons sugar, separated
1 egg, room temperature
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour, separated
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 cups blueberries
½ cup buttermilk

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter, lemon zest, and 3/4 cup + 1 tablespoon of the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until combined.

Meanwhile, toss the blueberries with ¼ cup of flour. In a separate bowl whisk together the remaining 1 + 3/4 cup of flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the flour mixture to the batter a little at a time, alternating with the buttermilk. Remove excess flour from the blueberries, then fold the blueberries gently into the batter. Batter will be thick.

Grease a 9-inch square baking pan with non-stick spray. Spread batter into pan. Sprinkle batter with remaining tablespoon of sugar. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes. Check with a toothpick to make sure is cooked through. If necessary, return pan to oven for as long as 10 more minutes.   Let cool at for 10-15 minutes before serving.

ENJOY!

to print the recipe, click here

batter-side

Did I mention we’ve been overly busy these days?  At the risk of boring you to death with trivia about growing bacteria, I will share some of the sordid details. For some experiments, we need to start cultures growing around 11pm, and then take care of them again before 5:30am. Usually Phil goes late at night, and I play the early bird.  It’s not that bad, these late night and early morning visits to the lab are short, we prepare everything beforehand to make it easier. I can quickly drive back home, swallow a much-needed cappuccino, take a shower and we go back to work on our regular schedule. Soooo, back to food.  I decided to bake this breakfast cake in of those hectic mornings and take to the department still warm from the oven.

Knowing I would be sleepy and prone to making mistakes, I lined up all ingredients the night before (the blueberries slept in the fridge, together with the buttermilk). Mis-en-place, mes amis. Mis-en-place.

ingredients

Before I left for the lab, I turned the oven on.  Arriving back, Phil had my cappuccino ready, all I had to do was drink the batter, mix the cappuccino… ooops, I guess it was the other way around… What matters is that our department got a freshly baked blueberry cake. Mission accomplished!

pieces

Lots of blueberries make this cake moist and quite crumbly. Make sure to bake it long enough so that pieces will be easy to cut.

Rebekah, I hope you are having a wonderful Reveal Day, I loved cooking from your site!

For all my readers, have fun checking out what the other members of my group prepared for today’s Reveal Day by clicking on the blue frog at the end of my post.

ONE YEAR AGO: Silky Cauliflower Puree with Almond Milk


FOUR YEARS AGO: Popeye-Pleasing Salad 

FIVE YEARS AGO: Summer’s Finale

 

RASPBERRY SORBET AT SUMMER’S END

Posted in Desserts, Sweets by

Last week a colleague from our new department in KSU stopped by my office and asked if I liked raspberries.  No need to think much about the answer! It turns out that he is an amazing gardener, and a very active member of the Manhattan Community Garden, a project that started in 1974 and never stopped growing. Small plots of land are rented to whoever wants to grow fruits or vegetables. The city provides the water, tools, and a lot of advice. You can read more about it here. Maybe one day Phil and I can join and become better gardeners… 😉

Back to berries. A few hours later, our colleague comes back with a big box of raspberries, still warm from the sun!  I know, I know, everyone should be so lucky!  I wanted to put them to good use, so I made a delicious raspberry sorbet. Phil and I bravely fought over the last spoonful a few evenings later.   😉

RASPBERRY SORBET
(from the Bewitching Kitchen)

4 to 5 cups raspberries
1 cup fresh blueberries (optional, see comments)
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup water
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Make a simple syrup by heating the sugar with the water in a saucepan (or microwave) until the sugar is fully dissolved.  Allow it to cool, no need to refrigerate.

Place the raspberries  in the bowl of a food processor  and process until very smooth, stopping to scrape the sides of the bowl once or twice.  Pour the puree through a fine-mesh strainer and strain the mixture, pressing down  and scraping the inside of the strainer with a silicone spatula.  You will need a little more than 2 cups of smooth puree.  If you don’t have enough, you can use blueberries to bring the volume up.

Whisk the simple syrup and the lemon juice into the raspberry purée. Cover and refrigerate until cold, at least 3 hours.  Pour the mixture in your ice cream maker and process it according to the instructions of your machine.  Once the sorbet is ready, place it in a container and freeze for a few hours before serving.

ENJOY!

to print the recipe, click here

Comments:  Making the puree of raspberries is very easy using a food processor, but I went through three sizes of strainers to find the one that allowed me to separate the seeds from the pulp without too much grievance. It is not a pleasant job, but it ensures a smooth sorbet, so Keep Calm and Carry On. I added a little bit of blueberries (simply processed, no need to strain them), to make a volume of puree that would work in my ice cream maker, but if you have enough raspberry pulp, you can get by without any other fruit.   Add 3/4 of the simple syrup to begin with, once you have the base all ready, taste it and decide if you need more.   Raspberries have different degrees of tartness, and if you add other berries (strawberries could work well too) you will need less sugar.  I cannot think of a better way to close the season…

ONE YEAR AGO: When three is better than two

TWO YEARS AGO: Grating Tomatoes (and loving it!)

THREE YEARS AGO: A Peachy Salad for a Sunny Day

 

THE SECRET RECIPE CLUB: BLUEBERRY GALETTE

Posted in Desserts, Sweets, Secret Recipe Club by

The Secret Recipe Club is a fun monthly event in which bloggers are assigned in secret to make a recipe from another blog,  and then post about it at exactly the same time on reveal day.  The group is now so popular that new members must  wait in a long line for a chance to join.  This popularity also explains one of the rules: if you mess up and don’t post on reveal day, you are out of the game, leaving an opening for someone else to take your place. It’s only fair, after all: it’s very disappointing to have your blog “orphaned” on reveal day.

This month was a bit of a stretch  to participate, but I’m sure glad I did.  My assigned blog was  Baking and Creating with Avril.   Did you notice the “Baking” in the title?  I have a slight suspicion that the SRC organizers like to have a little fun at my expense…  How else could it be that I’ve been matched with serious bakers for months in a row?  😉  Still, I love a challenge, and as soon as I got the assignment I jumped into Avril’s cool site, in full “blog stalking mode”.  After narrowing a long list of tasty options, I could not decide between  the blueberry galette or the white chocolate cranberry  bars.   You see, she’s got some seriously delicious stuff posted.   Phil, the blueberry-addict, made the choice for me.  Blueberry galette it would be.

RUSTIC BLUEBERRY GALETTE
(from Baking and Creating with Avril) 

for the crust
1 +  1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 + 1/2 sticks unsalted butter {ice cold}
1 egg yolk
3 tablespoons  milk
3 tablespoons apricot preserves, warmed

for the filling:
3 cups fresh blueberries
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons Flour
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg, freshly grated
a pinch of salt

Make the crust: In a bowl of a food processor add the flour, sugar and salt, process to combine. Drop the cold butter pieces and pulse until small pea size crumbles appear. In a small bowl combine egg yolk and milk.  Pour into food processor and pulse just until combined.   Take dough mixture out of food processor and put onto a piece of parchment paper.  Form dough into a large disk, wrap parchment paper around it and place in refrigerator to chill for at least 30 minutes.

Make the filling by mixing in a large bowl the blueberries, flour, brown sugar, pinch of salt, cinnamon and nutmeg.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. On a lightly floured surface roll out the chilled pie crust to about 12 inches in diameter. Transfer to a parchment lined large baking sheet. Place the filling in the center of the pie crust, then fold up the sides pleating every now and then. Brush with warmed apricot preserves. Place in preheated oven to bake for 50-60 minutes. Rotating the pan halfway through. Let cool for 15 minutes before slicing and serving.

ENJOY!

to print the recipe, click here

Comments:  As far as taste goes, I hit the nail in the head.  I could eat the filling of the galette by the spoonful over some nice, thick yogurt. But, let’s be honest: my product wouldn’t make the finals of the 2012 Galette Beauty Pageant.  In my defense, I made this recipe in one of the busiest weekends ever, preceded by a full day flying back to OK and a lab move that began the next  morning (Friday) at 5am!  That weekend found me  like a zombie trying to finish countless tasks at the same time.

But, I won’t sugar-coat the pill:  frantic times or not, pie crust is always tricky for me. Usually Phil comes to the rescue, but the poor guy had enough on his plate.  My pie dough was not as smooth as I hoped for, so I couldn’t make the beautiful pleats, trademarks of a nice galette.  Oh, well…   It gives me the opportunity to improve my baking skills, right? Alternatively, I can stand by the title and profess my galette as the most rustic ever! 😉

Don’t let my boo-boos prevent you from making it. Avril is right, the galette is incredibly tasty, and you should also consider making the original recipe (link is in Avril’s blog), that includes a mixture of fresh peaches and blueberries.  Oh, my….

Avril, it was nice to “meet” you through The Secret Recipe Club!  I hope you had a lot of fun finding your assigned blog and cooking from it!

ONE YEAR AGO: In My Kitchen, August 2011

TWO YEARS AGO: Journey to a New Home

THREE YEARS AGO: Friday Night Dinner (very tasty pork medallions)