smitten kitchen » Blueberries

blueberry yogurt multigrain pancakes

deb — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 18:10:21 +0000

I had a little crisis on Father’s Day, and unlike the week that proceeded it, it did not relate to a feverish toddler who landed himself in our bed (and proceeded to be well enough at 5 a.m. to stand up and announce the different parts of our face as he poked them “NO” “EYEAR” “AYE” “MOUF”), the gutting of our (single) bathroom so that plumbers could access a wayward pipe in the building or the thin film of dirt left on every surface of every room when they were done working. No, by Father’s Day, most of those things had thankfully righted themselves, leaving only crises of less grave proportions: the blueberry pancakes I’d always known and loved no longer worked for me.

I mean, they work, in terms of technically executing what they’re supposed to. They’re a bit runnier than I remembered, thus making it difficult to flip and bake them through cleanly, but they’re hardly worth complaining over, or so felt the Dad of Honor who found them–as he is contractually obligated to–delicious. We ate our pancakes, showered him with gifts and set off for the playground. But I couldn’t stop thinking about them; they didn’t sit right and I realized that it had less to do with the recipe and more to do with … me. I’ve changed.

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perfect blueberry muffins

deb — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 17:50:53 +0000

When blueberries first show up at the market, it feels like sacrilege to bake with them — ditto with raspberries, blackberries and strawberries. Mother Nature made them perfect! Why drown them in batter, wilt them with heat and then leave them out to dry? What brutes we’d be! But there’s a day in August — I think it might have been yesterday* — when something shifts. The high for the day is in the 60s, you run out to the market and what is this? Did you wish you’d brought your cardigan? How strange! And all of a sudden the prospect of a berry baked into something warm and cozy, that you might eat with your first hot coffee of the season, seems very right.

And it is around this time every year that I try to find the best blueberry muffin. I’ve made them with buttermilk and yogurt and cream cheese too, with streusel and dipped in butter and rolled in cinnamon-sugar; I’ve tucked them into corn muffins and bran muffins too, back to one I got from Cook’s Illustrated eons ago (introduced to me by the lovely Elise), but that’s different from the recipes in the two Cook’s Illustrated cookbooks that I own and also at least three of the five other blueberry muffin recipes on their site (the last two are hidden behind a pay wall put between people already paying and people paying more than people who are paying, not that I’m venting or anything, ahem). It has a high dome and a thick batter that’s really more of a dough (a classically brilliant technique of CI’s to keep berries from sinking) and every time, they’re as pretty as a picture.

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peach blueberry cobbler

deb — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:40:25 +0000

I am having the worst luck with peaches this summer. Without fail, every week I am lured in by the most fragrant peaches I’ve ever sniffed at the market, and without fail, the day after they come home with me, they’re mush. Sweet, peachy mush. To eat one requires hovering over a sink, and then a mop and a shirt change anyway and no, sadly, I am not speaking of the baby’s messes. These are not bad problems to have; “Woe is me! My peaches are too juicy!” doesn’t exactly make a room nod in sympathy but the week I made the mistake of letting the peaches go a whole 48 hours uneaten the only thing left to with the misshapen lot was to bake them.

Like I said, not bad problems to have. These Jersey peaches are a fuzzy lot so although I’m not always particular about peach skin, I demanded it come off before I eat them. Fortunately, this is as simple as a little “X” in the bottom and a quick trip through boiling water, and naked peaches will slip-n-slide all over your counter. (See above: mop and new shirt.) And then, when I realized I had a whole leftover pint of blueberries, I forced them to face the same bubbling dark brown sugar fate as the peaches. With a cornmeal biscuit on top. I don’t think they minded meeting their end this way, do you?

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blueberry boy bait

deb — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:13:44 +0000

A few weeks ago, as I was going on about how much I like just about every color and shade of baked fruit desserts, the goofier the name — be it “grunt”, “slump”, “buckle”, or “betty” — the better, a reader named Shirley asked me if I’d ever tried anything called Blueberry Boy Bait.

And people, seeing as I unabashedly choose magazines for their covers and fawn over the titles of books (“I Was Told There’d Be Cake,” anyone?) that I have no interest in reading, let’s just say that although I had no idea what Blueberry Boy Bait was, I knew it would be made, in my kitchen, sooner than soon. [Well, actually I'd bookmarked it for August, when I believed blueberries to be in season, only to find them at my local greenmarket four days later where I proceeded to plotz from happiness. Bring on the boy-baiting!]

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blueberry crumb bars

deb — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 20:25:26 +0000

I uploaded pictures of this recipe yesterday onto Flickr, but didn’t get to telling you all about it because I was feeling a little lackadaisical after that whole seven days in a row of posting thing. Three hours later, I received this comment: “Omg, post the recipe already!”

Hmmph! I thought. The natives are getting restless.

But who could blame them? Just look at these things! And, oh, to taste them. (As I just did. Because the memory of their deliciousness was vague and I had to. For the sake of clarification.) They’re tart and buttery and fruity and tangy and crumbly… And well, I understand why anyone would get impatient. Can you imagine how much people would revolt if they knew that I had baked these a whole five days ago and have kept them from you since?

It could get ugly.

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blueberry pancakes + pancake 101

deb — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:54:45 +0000

In the Great Deposit of Food Phobias post, a few of you said that you were afraid of making pancakes and my instant un-asked-for retort is that you all clearly didn’t grow up in my house, where I am pretty sure that knowing when to flip a pancake was one of the first cooking tricks I ever learned.

Mom made pancakes at least a couple weekends a month, and was loyal to the Joy of Cooking recipe, a page so batter-stained and grimy, I am pretty sure the book falls open to it even when the red ribbon isn’t at that page, which is never. And though I promise not to judge you, please, whatever you do, don’t say that Schmisquick word to my mother. It upsets her. I still remember sleeping over my friend’s house and coming over and saying that her mom made pancakes for breakfast, and that they were okay.

“Pfft,” my mother said. “She uses [that word that rhymes with Schmisquick].”

Mom was ruthless, and apparently I wasn’t much better. In college, my friends and I took to driving out to the 24-hour IHOP in Arlington whenever it struck our fancy, but I never ordered pancakes. At IHOP. Because they tasted like they were from a mix. And my mother, rather than discouraging the “Pancake Snob” label my friends were giving me, beamed with pride.

But that’s enough about all the ways my mother poisoned me against anything but homemade things. I’d much rather take you on a tour of how easy pancakes can be.

10 Pancake Tips
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summer berry pudding

deb — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 21:21:01 +0000

Remember when I said that I have a theory about the weather, that it is mocking you and waiting for you to snap? Well, this is me throwing my hands in the air. Mock away, I say, have your fun. Just give me my back an unsticky neck and the energy level that comes with not being wiped out, the rest of the evening cancelled, after a 1.3 mile walk home.

I know I sound like I have the coping skills of an infant, and I’m okay with this as well. These are not times for pride; I have no expectations that I will come away from this summer looking like any kind of champion. I am not enough of a martyr to grin and bear it, and I am fortunate enough to be friends with people who have no expectation that anyone should.

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mixed berry pavlova

deb — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 16:34:39 +0000

I think it pretty much goes without saying that I wasn’t going to be allowed to show up to my parent’s seder tonight without one of these, but when my mother came down at the end of last week with both bronchitis and conjunctivitis in both eyes, did not consider this, perhaps, a sign from above that she would be given a pass on the thirteen-guest dinner tonight and insisted upon foraging ahead, she asked if I could attack the second dessert we’d decided upon–the mighty pavlova–as she wanted to wait until she was no longer contagious to start cooking. I thought that was mighty considerate of her, and of course, had been chomping at the bit to make it anyhow, so I didn’t mind.

Pavlovas are one of those things that I’d never heard of three months ago but have heard about almost weekly since. There was Nigella’s with passion fruit on her new show, Ina Garten’s mixed berry version and her subsequent mention that it would be included in her last meal on earth, no small feat for a woman known for starting every recipe with “beat a pound of butter in a mixer.” But the clincher was Shuna’s gorgeous guest-post on Simply Recipes a couple weeks back, and its step-by-step photos. What better to counterbalance the riches of thick swaths of whipped cream between layers of dead-serious chocolate cake but a giant meringue piled with fresh fruit? And why had I not thought to make this for Passover before?

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