Blueberry Buckle
Today, Wednesday August 10, 2011 there will be a guest post by me on Cookie Madness.
For the story and the recipe, click on the link. And check out the previous post here at Basically Baked for a peach and mixed berry crisp that was one of the contenders for my guest post at Cookie Madness.
Peach and Mixed Berry Crisp
On Wednesday August 10, 2011 there will be a post written by yours truly on Cookie Madness! I couldn’t be any more excited about the opportunity to do a guest post for Anna while she’s on vacation. The inspiration for the post is the Ginsberg’s Alaskan cruise.
When Anna and I chatted we talked about ice cream desserts but as I did my research and thought about Alaska I kept coming back to berries. One of the recipes I was really excited about is this crisp recipe I found on Epicurious. Apparently it is on the menu at a place in Anchorage called Marx Bros. Cafe. A google search for Marx Bros. Cafe told me that if I ever get to Anchorage I will make time for a meal there.
The peach berry crisp is excellent. It didn’t make the cut for my Cookie Madness post because it was the slightest bit runny and I didn’t think the photos were very appealing. That said, it’s a very tasty dessert and one I would make again. I loved the flavors of all the fruits and the topping was nice and crisp.
My husband enjoyed this with vanilla ice cream. I ate mine straight up.
Peach and Mixed Berry Crisp (adapted by Sue at Basically Baked)
Topping
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup (packed) light brown sugar
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
Fruit layer
2 large peaches, peeled, pitted, chopped (about 2 1/2 cups)
1 1/3 cups blueberries (about 6 ounces)
1 1/3 cups raspberries (about 6 ounces)
1 1/3 cups blackberries (about 5.6 ounces)
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons flour
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter an 8×8 inch baking dish.
In a small bowl whisk together the dry ingredients for the topping, then add the butter and rub all of the ingredients together with the back of a spoon until the crumbs are very fine. You can also do this with your fingers but I prefer to use a spoon. Set the mixture aside.
Put all of the fruit in a separate bowl and toss it with the sugar and flour.
Place the mixture in the prepared baking dish and bake for 40 minutes stirring every ten minutes until the juices are bubbling. Bake another five minutes.
Remove from the oven. Increase the oven temperature to 400 degrees.
Top with the reserved topping mixture and bake for another 20 minutes, until the topping is golden.
Remove from the oven and cool slightly. Serve slightly warm.
I’m so excited to share this with you. The picture doesn’t do this justice. It is so good. I love gelato and no one in my area makes it. The first time I had gelato was in Germany in 1979. It was years before I had it again but I never forgot that first taste. When my daughter lived in Arizona we found an awesome gelato shop there, but she no longer lives there so I have no where to get my once or twice a year gelato fix.
My husband recently received an ice cream maker attachment for our Kitchen Aid stand mixer. We have one of the big hand crank ice cream makers, but we rarely use it. It has to be quite the occasion to justify that much manual labor, and all of the fuss with ice and salt. He has made two batches of ice cream already with his new toy. One batch of vanilla and one batch of Heath Bar Crunch. They were both great!!
Now that he’s broken it in I figured it was my turn to have a go at a frozen treat, so I’ve been searching for a gelato recipe. I really wanted to find a recipe without eggs. I’ve ordered some books from Amazon, but they haven’t arrived yet, so in the meantime I searched the Internet. I finally found this recipe and figured I couldn’t go wrong. Especially when the grocery store had the blueberries on sale buy one get one free!
This gelato really hit the spot. The fruit taste is very intense and the texture was very pleasing. I will definitely make this again, but can’t wait to explore more recipes over time.
Update: The gelato texture suffers when completely frozen after being in the freezer overnight. To revive the gelato microwave it on high for 30 seconds and mash it with a spoon. Give it a few more seconds in the microwave if needed or let it sit for a few more minutes and mush it around some more. It’s almost as good as it was fresh out of the ice cream freezer.
Blueberry Gelato (Adapted from this recipe.)
2 pints of fresh blueberries
the juice of 1 lemon
1 c. of whole milk
3/4 c. sugar.
Puree the blueberries and the lemon juice with an immersion blender or in a regular blender. Cover and thoroughly chill in the refrigerator
Combine sugar and milk and heat over medium low heat until the sugar is completely dissolved. Cover and chill this in the refrigerator.
Before adding to the ice cream maker, whisk together the milk mixture and the pureed blueberries. Process according to the directions for your ice cream maker. In our ice cream maker it took about 12 minutes.
An excellent muffin!
Yesterday I made the blueberry muffin recipe from the May/June issue of Cook’s Illustrated. The recipe is by Yvonne Ruperti. As I was making them I felt they had a lot of unnecessary steps. Melting and cooling butter, making jam, letting it cool, and making a topping. Maybe I was a little out of sorts because yesterday I wasn’t sure the muffins were special enough to warrant all of that fiddling. They’re muffins after all. There are thousands of recipes for blueberry muffins, most of which don’t require much fuss and that’s what I’m used to.
Even so I noticed how much I liked the grated lemon zest and sugar topping. It gives the muffins a little tang, and a little crunch. I also noted that I liked the crumb of the muffins. They’re moist and the flavors are very clear. They don’t require any additional butter or jam or at the table. They’re excellent just the way they are.
By the time afternoon tea rolled around I had decided that these muffins were worth every little step detailed in the recipe and I was sorry for my bad attitude towards them in the morning.
This morning before heading over to the gym I had one for a pre-work out snack, and my affection for these muffins was confirmed. They’re everything I want from a blueberry muffin.
I have some research to do about muffin tins. I thought mine was a standard size muffin tin, but it’s very old, so maybe standard size has gotten bigger over the years. I had more batter than I could comfortably fit into twelve muffin cups but I did it anyway and my muffins are not as attractive as they could have been.
Moist crumb with good blueberry flavor.
My photographs represent the most attractive of the twelve, and the cross section doesn’t represent how many blueberries there are in each muffin. There are plenty of blueberries and even though I had to use frozen fruit the blueberry flavor is excellent. I’m going to ask for permission to post the recipe and if I receive permission I’ll update this post. If I don’t get permission please refer to page 21 of the May/June issue of Cook’s Illustrated.
This post has been edited to include the recipe with permission from Cook’s Illustrated !
Best Blueberry Muffins
Makes 12 Muffins
Lemon Sugar Topping
1/3 c. (2 1/3 ounces) sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest from 1 lemon
Muffins
2 cups (about 10 ounces) fresh blueberries, picked over
1 1/8 cups (8 ounces) plus 1 teaspoon sugar
2 1/2 cups (12 1/2 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
1/4 c. vegetable oil
1 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1. For the topping: Stir together sugar and lemon zest in small bowl until combined; set aside.
2. For the muffins: Adust oven rack to the upper-middle position and heat oven to 425 degrees. Spray standard muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray. Bring 1 cup blueberries and 1 teaspoon sugar to simmer in small saucepan over medium heat. Cook, mashing berries with spoon several times and stirring frequently, until berries have broken down and mixture is thickened and reduced to 1/4 cup, about 6 minutes. Transfer to small bowl and cool to room remperature, 10-15 minutes.
3. Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together in large bowl. Whisk remaining 1 1/8 c. sugar and eggs together in medium bowl until thick and homogeneous, about 45 seconds. Slowly whisk in butter and oil until combined. Whisk in buttermilk and vanilla until combined. Using rubber spatula, fold egg mixture and remaining cup blueberries into flour mixture until just moistened. (Batter will be very lumpy with few spots of dry flour; do not overmix.)
4.Divide batter equally among prepared muffin cups (batter should completely fill cups and mound slightly). Spoon teaspoon of cooked berry mixture into center of each mound of batter. Using chopstick or skewer, gently swirl berry filling into batter using figure-eight motion. Sprinkle lemon sugar evenly over muffins.
5. Bake until muffin tops are golden and just firm, 17-19 minutes, rotating muffin tin from front to back halfway through baking time. Cool muffins in muffin tin for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire rack and cool 5 minutes before serving.
To substitute frozen berries. Cook 1 cup as directed in Step 2. Rinse remaining berries under cold water and dry well. In step 3, toss dried berries into flour mixture before adding egg mixture. Proceed with recipe as directed.
Basically Baked 