TWD: Blueberry-Brown Sugar Plain Cake

The great recipes just keep on coming for Tuesdays With Dorie. This week we made Blueberry-Brown Sugar Plain Cake! I do most of my more complicated baking on the weekend, but I generally bake on a least one weeknight (usually Wednesday) and this is exactly the type of recipe I like to make: something that can be put together in the time it takes dinner to cook, can be dumped into one pan, and does not need to be frosted. Something that will feed Josh breakfast for a few days is also often in the criteria for midweek baking and this will definitely do that. (In full disclosure, this particular recipe was actually made on Monday night.)

Anyway, since somehow I’ve managed a record three posts in 24 hours, I will not continue to yammer on too much about this cake other than to say we liked it! I’m actually considering forgoing my usual healthy breakfast tomorrow in favor of eating this cake, which says a lot about it. We rated this cake an 8 for Deliciousness and a 3 for Effort (though I was surprised that a "plain cake" involved whipping egg whites separately), for an EDR of 2.666.

Many thanks to Cindy of Everyday Insanity for selecting this lovely cake. You can find the recipe here on her site and visit the TWD site to see how the other bakers liked it.

SMS: Lemon Blueberry Buttermilk Pie

This week’s Sweet Melissa Sundays selection is Lemon Blueberry Buttermilk Pie. I will be hosting Sweet Melissa Sundays next week and this is actually the recipe I had been planning to pick! I guess the good news was I would get to make it earlier. However, I did end up making my selection two weeks ago and didn’t make the pie until today.



It’s late, so I’m just going to keep this short and say I loved this pie! It was really pie perfection in my eyes: sweet fresh berries, a tangy and creamy center, and a fabulously buttery-flaky crust. I used this pie dough recipe from Smitten Kitchen. I happened to make two pies in one weekend earlier this summer: one with Melissa’s all-butter dough and one with Smitten Kitchen’s, and decided I preferred the one from SK (only by a small nudge, though).



I rated this pie a 9 for Deliciousness and 3.5 for Effort, for an EDR of 2.57. Many thanks to Melissa of Lulu the Baker for an excellent choice. You can find the recipe here on Lulu the Baker, along with many lovely food photos (the presentation on Melissa’s site is always beautiful) and yummy-looking recipes, and stop by the Sweet Melissa site to see how the rest of the group liked this pie.

Buckle up!

Earlier this summer, my boyfriend’s mother had given me a recipe for blueberry crumble and somehow the recipe was misplaced (actually, if you saw my unruly recipe stack that “somehow” would not surprise you) before I had a chance to make it; I did find another blueberry recipe of hers, this one for buckle, in the pile, so I made that instead; the batter of this cake was very dense, but it baked up nice and fluffy, with a thin, crunchy sugar topping; we loved it (and it was super-easy), but Mr. Penpen’s mom says the crumble is even better, so she’s going provide me with another copy of that recipe - look for it soon.



Blueberry Buckle, from Nancy R. (for printable recipe, click HERE)

Crumb Topping
¼ cup butter at room temperature, cut into small pieces
1/3 cup flour
½ teaspoon cinnamon
½ cup sugar

Cake
¼ cup butter at room temperature
¾ cup sugar
1 egg
½ cup milk (regular or buttermilk)
2 cups flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 cups fresh blueberries, rinsed and drained

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and butter a 9x9 inch baking pan (8x8 would also work).

Mix the ingredients for the crumb topping together in a small bowl with either a pastry blender or fork until butter is incorporated. Set aside.

In a small bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt. In a larger bowl (or the bowl of a stand mixer) cream the butter and sugar until well blended. Beat in egg. Add milk, and then stir in flour mixture. Fold in the drained blueberries. Spread batter in pan and sprinkle with the crumb topping. Bake 40 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

Blueberry-Buttermilk Sherbet

You could call these his and hers ice cream flavors: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough for my boyfriend – we run the same number of miles per week, but my metabolism cannot handle nearly as many decadent desserts as his – and Blueberry-Buttermilk Sherbet for me (though I did, of course, steal some bites of cookie dough ice cream and Mr. Penpen thought the sherbet was the best of the healthier concoctions to come out of our ice cream maker); the sherbet has the pure fruit taste of a good sorbet, but the buttermilk makes it a bit more substantial and slightly creamy; overall, an excellent summer dessert – you won’t even miss the heavy cream.





Blueberry-Buttermilk Sherbet, adapted from Blackberry-Buttermilk Sherbet from page 129 of Pure Dessert by Alice Medrich, printable recipe HERE

3 cups fresh blueberries, rinsed and drained
1 cup sugar
2 ¾ cups buttermilk

Pulse the berries and sugar in a food processor until they are pureed, but a few small chunks remain (alternatively, mash together by hand). Transfer blueberry mixture to medium bowl and stir in buttermilk. Chill the mixture in the refrigerator (the original recipe does not specify for how long; I left mine in for several hours, but an hour would probably be fine). For an extra-cold start, put the mixture in the freezer, stirring once or twice to prevent freezing (I did not do this). Freeze the mixture in your ice cream maker, according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Serve soft or transfer to an airtight container and freeze until hard enough to scoop. Best served within several days (I have been testing the boundaries on this, since the recipe makes a lot).

Vacation Pie and an Apricot Brioche Tart for a very late TWD

Happy Thursday! I returned from visiting my brother and his girlfriend in Boston Tuesday afternoon, so I started my TWD recipe that evening and finished it Wednesday morning. I had this sweet idea that I would bake the selected brioche tart for my family (my mom was also there) while I was on vacation, but nice weather and a fun city are hardly conducive to baking and blogging, so it didn’t happen. It was kind of nice to have a break, actually. Quite surprisingly, I ran quite a bit while I was on vacation, which is usually the first thing to go. Lucky for us, another family member did bake! We went to Connecticut (as a Californian, I think it’s cool that you can state-hop so easily in New England) to visit relatives, and my multi-talented and incredibly hospitable aunt had prepared a splendid summer dinner for us, including a blueberry pie! I’d been wanting to bake something with blueberries for a couple weeks now (Mr. Penpen’s mother sent me home with blueberries and some yummy-sounding recipes on the Fourth and I just ate the blueberries for breakfast) and this pie definitely satisfied the craving! I gave my aunt’s pie a 10 for Deliciousness and 0 for Effort. I can’t think of a better dessert on a summer evening, particularly when it’s been baked by someone else and eaten with family. I think I’m going to have to make one myself soon, though, Mr. Penpen just saw the pie photos from my trip!



The baking vacation ended within hours of getting off the plane, though. I’ve mentioned before, I’m a yeast bread novice, so I always feel a little apprehensive when one is selected. Fortunately, this was an astonishingly pliable dough (no big glutinous mess – yay!) and it was a very positive baking experience. I think if I had made this in one day, I might have felt like it was rather time-consuming, but since the dough rested overnight and just had to be “slapped” a few times the day it was made, I didn’t feel like it was an obtrusive project. There may be more yeast breads in my future. Instead of purchasing both plums and plum jam, I used leftover apricot jam from a recent unblogged apricot galette and bought some apricots. The brioche was nice and tender, and I loved the sweet, gooey fruit on top: an excellent breakfast for a relaxed morning off and even better later in the afternoon when the flavors melded a bit.





This recipe gets an 8.5 for Deliciousness and 3.5 for Effort, giving it an EDR of 2.42. Many thanks to Denise of Chez Us for selecting this great treat. You can find the recipe on Denise’s site and see what the other bakers thought via the TWD site.

Blueberry Oat Scones

When I make scones, they’re typically of the cream/currant variety; I particularly like the ones from The Best New Recipes, which I will definitely have to blog about one day. However, the very first scones I ever ate were made from oat bran and baked by my father. They were adapted from a wheat bran scone recipe in The Breakfast Book by Marion Cunningham, and he said he used oat bran because it was considered the most heart healthy grain at the time. Whether they were actually healthful or not is questionable – I will have to get my hands on a copy of the book to see what else is in them, but regardless, they were excellent scones. I had pretty much forgotten about them, but then last week I was reading Molly Wizenberg’s Cooking Life column in the July issue of Bon Appetit and was reminded of my fondness for oat scones.

The recipe featured in Bon Appetit is for Blueberry Oat Scones, and they are quite different in taste and texture from the ones my dad used to make (as far as I can remember from the late eighties and early nineties), but equally good. The scones have a buttery, fluffy texture – almost like a muffin; in fact, it was hard to believe there were whole oats in them. I don’t typically use condiments on muffins or scones, and these don’t need anything, but I do think they would be tasty with a little jam or honey, as they are not terribly sweet. Overall, a great way to start a weekend morning! I gave this recipe an 8 for Deliciousness and a 2.5 for Effort, giving them an EDR of 3.2. You can find the recipe HERE. [Note: the original recipe calls for eleven tablespoons of butter. I made half a batch and used four, and they were great.]