Blueberries

Buried in Blueberries - Linda Laflamme
The Replies
             Blueberry Pizza - Lois
             John Blumel
             Otto Schlosser (drooling...)
             Blueberry Cordial/Syrup - Astrid Bear
             Sara Waterson
             Bruce Trinque
             Robin Welch
             Doug Essinger-Hileman
             Joe Pomis
             Lois
             Hugh Yemen
             Gary Brown
             Jessie Strader
             Mama's Blueberry - Pragathi Katta
             Brian Davis
             Spiced Blueberry Jam - Christine Wolfe
             Blueberry Muffins - Lois
Frozen Blueberries
             Robin Welch
             Jim Muller
             Linda DeMars

Buried in Blueberries - Linda Laflamme
Does anyone have any good recipes that use blueberries?
Our wild bushes are heavily laden, and I'm like Jack ashore: unable to leave any of the juicy, ripe beauties for my rivals. I pick and pick and pick, and still there are more turning from blush to blue each day.
So far, I've made two batches of muffins and two pies, and still 6 cups of berries languish in my refrigerator with that many and more still yet to be gathered. (Fear not for the chipmunks, ducks, birds, and our other wildlife, we purposefully leave certain bushes for them. Alas, they do not show the same courtesy.)
I considered substituting blueberries for the ginger in the list scone recipe, but the kneading would likely turn the berries to mush. So I welcome any recipe suggestions that you might have.

The Replies
Blueberry Pizza - Lois
Soften a stick of butter. Cream with 1/2 cup of sugar. Add a beaten egg and mix in a cup of flour. Pat this into a pie plate. Leave edges exposed, cover middle and up to edges with lots of fruit, in this case, a whole pint of blueberries. Sugar the fruit if you like things sweet. Bake at 375 til done. Mine took over 45 mins. This makes something like a small sweet fruit pizza.

John Blumel
1. Put as many blueberries as you can eat in a bowl.
2. Pour heavy cream over them.
3. Eat.

Otto Schlosser (drooling...)
Blueberry-glazed cheesecake.... ooooooooooooo.

Blueberry Cordial/Syrup - Astrid Bear
My favorite cookbook to turn to at moments like this is "Fancy Pantry" by Helen Witty -- no longer in print, alas, but lots of copies available used through Amazon Shops.
Here is her recipe for Blueberry Cordial/Syrup:
(Recipe can be doubled)
3 cups ripe blueberries
3 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups water
1/3 cup strained lemon juice
Good quality vodka (if making cordial)
Sort berries, rinse, and drain well. Puree berries in blender or food processor and pour into ceramic or stainless bowl. Cover with a thick cloth, like terry cloth, and let sit at room temperature for 36 hours. Stir after 2-3 hours, and several times more during the fermentation period. A crust will form, and later it will become foamy.
Line a sieve with one layer of dampened very fine nylon net or two layers of cheesecloth, and set it over a bowl. Pour in the puree and let drain. When the flow of juice dwindles, twist the corners of the cloth together and press hard on the pulp to extract all possible juice. Discard the pulp and measure the juice. You should have about 1 1/3 cup.
Combine water and sugar in saucepan. Bring to boil over high heat and boil, uncovered, to the soft ball stage (235 degrees F.) Add the blueberry and lemon juices, stir, and return to the boil. Simmer, uncovered, for 5 minutes. Remove from heat.
Let cool completely, then stir in vodka to your taste -- between 1/2 cup to 1 cup vodka per cup of syrup. Funnel into clean dry bottles, then cap or cork. Keeps indefinitely in a dark cupboard.
To make syrup, make a double recipe of cordial base. Once it has simmered for 5 minutes, pour it, boiling hot, into hot, clean, pint-sized canning jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Seal with new two-piece canning lids, and follow manufacturer's directions for sealing. Process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes. Cool, label, and store.
To store syrup in refrigerator, let syrup cool completely, funnel into sterilized bottles or jars, cover and store in fridge. Keeps for many months. Yield, about 6 cups.
In addition to gracing pancakes and waffles, the syrup can also be used as a drink base -- pour 3 T. over ice and add club soda.

Sara Waterson
My cousin's husband is a great fan of blueberries. He makes a very simple but refreshing dessert which is blueberries and raspberries, mixed with strawberries chopped in half. Also redcurrants if you can find them...
This is sprinkled with caster sugar, and left to stand in a cold place so the juices run; it looks very pretty in a cut-glass bowl, especially if sprinkled with borage flowers. Serve with ice cream, whipped cream, or creme fraiche, and/or meringues.
Apple and blueberry crumble would be good too - blackberries tend to be so gritty.

Bruce Trinque
Blueberries with cold cereal, blueberries with blueberries ...

Robin Welch
Blueberries with Spam
Blueberries with M****te

Doug Essinger-Hileman
Add blueberries to any good muffin recipe.

Joe Pomis
Blueberry waffles. Just stick 'em in the batter and pour the stuff on the iron. Hoo Hoo.

Lois
If you have 'that' many blueberries you don't know what to do with, put in your blender or food processor with a little liquid, tie off the borders of a white tee shirt, and dip. Voila, a new look.
Or soak your extremities in it, and you're ready for early Briton war games.
All assuming there's no way to put them in a box, and ship them to me. Since that seems to be the case, here's a blueberry tart recipe. Crust: 1 1/4 cup flour (all purpose or whole wheat), 1/4 cup sugar (white or brown), 1/2 t salt, 7 T cold butter cut up some, 1 egg. Put all in food processor. Blend. Pour into pie plate. Press down into shape. Bake "blind" (the crust alone) at 350 or 375 until done.
Get a jar of clear apricot jelly. Melt some in the microwave, you don't need much. Get one of those new silicon pastry brushes. When the pie shell is cool, brush the jelly on it. Cover with a layer of blueberries. Paint jelly over the blueberries with the jammed up brush, to glaze. You can add a second layer of blueberries. Glaze/brush them with the jam too, if you want.
Eat.

Hugh Yemen
I've made quite a few pies and, aside from a strawberry/raspberry/rhubarb pie I made a few years back, the best have been blueberry/peach. If you haven't tried it then it might not seem like quite the thing, but trust me on this. It's a heavenly combination. Just take a blueberry pie recipe and substitute peaches for half the blueberries. If memory serves, the amount of sugar and lemon juice varies somewhat between the two recipes, so use an amount halfway between them.

Gary Brown
Being a great fan of Sloe Gin, but there being a dearth - indeed absence - of the sloe berry in the USA, I'm trying Blueberry Gin this year. You take your gin (Plymouth Gin is best), you drink a 1/3 of the bottle, you fill the now vacant 1/3 with blueberries, you add some almond slivers (or better yet, crushed cherry pits). You leave for 4 months, shaking occasionally. You filter; you enjoy.
The puzzle is sugar. Sloe Gin is usually sloes, gin and sugar. But blueberries are a tad sweeter than sloes. So I'm doing two bottles, one sugared, one not. Just by way of experiment, you understand.

Jessie Strader
I've made blueberry cobbler and crisp and even flummery, but my favorite so far is blueberry shortcake -- same as strawberry just better imho. In fact shortcake is good for just about any berry I think -- except maybe kiwis, but I don't like them to start.

Pragathi Katta
I'm copying here a column from Kim O'Donnell at the WashPo. A number of readers of her column and chats have since tried this recipe with certain variations and all have loved it. Most of the variations seem to be in the way of reducing the sugar. In any event here is a recipe for Blueberry Buckle:
One, Two, Buckle My Berry (Opens in a new page.)
"I've made cobbler and I've tried my hand at slump, but until this weekend, I had never done a buckle.
Most Americans are familiar with cobbler or crisp, which come from a lexicon of classic American desserts featuring baked fruit. The difference between the two is all in the topping - crisp is 'crispier' with butter, brown sugar and sometimes rolled oats; cobbler is often crowned with biscuits.
But a buckle -- what the heck is that? I like to think of it as a trifecta - part fruit, part topping, with an extra bonus component of cake. I am beginning to think that the buckle is far superior to the cobbler, although my opinion may sway, depending on the fruit being used. As many of you know, there's nothing quite like a peach cobbler, but I'm thinking that berries are best in a buckle.
In the recipe below, blueberries are the star, but raspberries, blackberries and strawberries would also work beautifully. Here's the lowdown: A greased baking dish gets lined with a simple vanilla-y batter (sugar, butter, egg, vanilla, milk, flour). Fruit goes on top, then gets the final touch of a sugary 'crumb topping.'
What happens is that as batter rises, the sandwiched fruit does too, and kind of 'buckles' in the process, giving it a dimply appearance. Cut into squares and serve with a smidge of vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.
Don't expect leftovers - this one's sublime.
"Mama's Blueberry Buckle"
Adapted from "Recipes From a Very Small Island" by Linda Greenlaw and Martha Greenlaw
Ingredients
Batter
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla (Not in original recipe, but spritzes up flavor of batter)
2 cups blueberries (1 pint)
Topping
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, cold, cut into dice
Method:
Preheat oven to 350. Butter an 8-inch square baking dish.
In the bowl of a electric mixer, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg and mix until combined.
In a small bowl, sift or whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Add dry ingredients to the batter, alternating with the milk, mixing until smooth and blended.
Scrape batter into prepared pan and spread with a rubber spatula so that it evenly covers the pan. Sprinkle berries over batter.
To make topping, whisk together sugar, flour and cinnamon in a small bowl. Add butter and work with a fork or your fingers until mixture is crumbly. Sprinkle topping over blueberries. Bake for about 40 minutes, or until berries are bubbling and topping is golden brown.
Let cool slightly and serve warm or at room temperature.
Serves about 6 buckle fiends."

Brian Davis
Our local ones are here and we've been eating them for breakfast, snacks during the day and I just finished a bowl watching television. They also make good pies.

Spiced Blueberry Jam - Christine Wolfe
1 quart of blueberries (chopped up)
2 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup honey
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1 pouch liquid pectin
Bring everything (except the nutmeg and liquid pectin) to a hard boil that can't be stirred down. Boil two minutes. Remove from heat and stir in pectin and nutmeg.
Pour into sterilized jars, and process. Or keep in the fridge.
Makes about 4 cups.

Blueberry Muffins - Lois
Ingredients:
1 stick of butter (1/4 pound)
1 cup of flour
3/4 cup of sugar
2 eggs
fruit--2 cups of blueberries, e.g.
Soften the butter--in microwave is fine, doesn't matter if is part melted. Add the flour and sugar, and the eggs. Blend all the ingredients, doesn't much matter how you do it, you don't need a mixer, should NOT be well beaten. Add the fruit--e.g. blueberries--and mix in.
Bake at 350 or 375 until done.
Makes a small cake or 4 large muffins or 6 small ones, and needs to be doubled for hungry kids.
Comments
This makes a stiff batter, and you can add a dollop or 2 of sour cream, a crushed banana, some applesauce, a bit of milk, if you want to make it more workable, BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO, and shouldn't add too much, not over 1/2 cup or so of "liquefier".
If you're the earthy crunchy type, you can sub some whole wheat flour for some of the white, some brown sugar for some of the white, and add some oats or wheat germ. Add too much of the good stuff and you end up with a pretty heavy gummy work product.
You can also spread the basic batter in a cake pan, and pat fruit into the top, to make a small cake. Don't worry about the batter being stiff, it'll spread out in baking. You can sprinkle sugar, cinnamon, on the fruit.

Frozen Blueberries
Robin Welch
They freeze nicely for later use with ice cream.

Jim Muller
Freez'em! They'll be great on pancakes next February. Or in a pie. Or on cereal.
Wash them, put a bunch in a freezer bag (preferably of a type that is thermally sealable), toss in the freezer.

Linda DeMars
If you freeze them on a single layer, then you can put them in a ziploc and pour out whatever you need for a recipe.