For those of you living in cooler climates, where the bushes are still bearing fruit, I suggest a Saturday afternoon spent with this batter. These muffins would be a happy ending to any small fruit, but I love blue ones the best—raspberries run, blackberries are too big for anything but a pie or crumble, and gooseberries are just too hard to come by. Dried fruit is nice, but nothing beats a fresh blueberry. I had a few extra pints on hand, and figured I could freeze some of the batter as a more interesting form of preservation.

Even if you’re in the northernmost tip of Maine and see yourself in blueberry season until September, I suggest you make these at your earliest convenience. Baking with blueberries gets me just about as happy as I can be: like swinging on the big tree in the front yard, surrounded by fireflies. Memory makes the most wonderful things eternal—even if they can’t last forever.

Goodbye, fresh bluettes. See you in June.

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Classic Blueberry Muffins

Makes 12

Adapted from Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook

½ c (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 ½ t baking powder

½ t salt

2 cups fresh blueberries

1 ½ cups sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

½ cup plain yogurt

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

12 muffin liners

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Preheat oven to 375. Line a standard muffin tin with 12 liners.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.

In a small bowl, toss blueberries with 1½ teaspoons of flour.

Beat butter and 1 ¼ c sugar until creamy and aerated. (About 5 minutes with a stand or electric mixer.)

Add eggs, one at a time, mixing until combined.

Add vanilla and yogurt and mix.

Slowly add in flour mixture, stirring until just combined.

Gently fold in blueberries using rubber spatula.

Divide batter evenly into muffin tin.

Just before baking, combine remaining ¼ sugar and cinnamon, and sprinkle over muffins.

Bake for 15 minutes, and rotate pan. Bake an additional 10 minutes and test for doneness.(Muffins are cooked when a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.)

In fact, just last week, Mom and I found some spectacular Maine blueberries on a trip up north, and I thought I would share this recipe with you in case you happen upon a similar trove. Perhaps you have some tenacious bushes in your backyard. Maybe a lucky farmer at the market. Maybe even, you’re climbing to the high end of the Appalachian trail, and will find some of these along your route. If so, I can confidently recommend the following recipe as a worthy blueberry send-off.

Inspiration for this came three years back, when Christopher and I went blueberry picking in Connecticut and came home with 5 fecund bags. We made a lot of pancakes, and a lot of muffins. We also made a buckle—his favorite childhood dessert. And because his timing is generally perfect, it has become something of a tradition that every August, for his birthday, another one gets made.

This year’s rendition came alongside a meal at his request: au gratin potatoes with caramelized onion and Poblano peppers, Ribeye with béarnaise sauce and sautéed spinach with shallots. I spent a nice afternoon in the kitchen, but after all of that whisking of butter and eggs for the béarnaise; the grilling of peppers and caramelizing of onion for the gratin and the searing of a rather large hunk of meat in a rather intimidating pad of butter, I was happy to dip my spoon into a fluffy yellow batter and fold in some perfect, little bluettes—the final round of the season.

Let me say one thing for this powerhouse ‘buckle:’ it’s not really a buckle. It’s more of a cake-crumble, which I like because it keeps the berries suspended and contained in its batter, rather than leaving them to spill out each time you lift a piece of dough from the top. That is not a bad thing, mind you: I love oozy blueberries, barely clinging to the times of my fork in their syrupy, deflated way. But I also like them a little bit pert—sweet, surprising bursts that pop out of a bite of dough.

On top of that, cobblers and traditional buckles are hard to serve for breakfast. It can be done, but you will most definitely look like you are eating last night’s dessert in the morning hours. This rendition, however, hints of a rustic loaf—especially if you cut it into squares instead of the traditional cake-angle. It’s amazing what presentation can do for your entire perception of a meal.

Anyway, if you can do this, do it now. If not, wait for next summer, or substitute the blueberries for something that remains in season… I hear there are some exquisite huckleberries in Wyoming these days. Blackberries, another personal favorite, are still very much gracing their needly bushes.

Blueberry Buckle Cake

Adapted from Gourmet

Serves 6-8

For the Top

1/4 cup soft, unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup raw sugar

1/3 cup flour (whole wheat or all purpose)

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

For the Batter:

3/4 cup soft, unsalted butter, softened

3/4 cup raw sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 teaspoon double-acting baking powder

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour (or 1 c all-purpose; 1/3 c whole wheat) plus 1 tbsp

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 large eggs

4 cups blueberries, clean and stemless

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and butter a round 10″ x 2″ cake pan.

Make the topping:

Blend butter, sugar, flour cinnamon and nutmeg until incorporated and pearl-sized balls form.

Cover and store in the refrigerator while preparing batter.

Make the batter:

Toss blueberries with 1 tbsp flour, set aside.

Cream together butter and sugar in a medium bowl with an electric mixer. Add vanilla.

In another bowl, stir together baking powder, flour and salt.

Beat flour mixture into butter mixture alternating with the eggs, one at a time.

Pour batter into cake pan and bake from 40-45 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into center of cake comes out clean and the topping is golden.

When I was young, I had the good fortune of living up the hill from a blueberry patch that belonged to a place called March Farms. Just passed the farm was a pond called Long Meadow, where my family went from morning until evening in the days when school was out.

Sometimes we headed down the road to March Farms for a basket of all-you-can-pick blueberries and one or two of Mrs. March’ s giant peanut butter cookies. It is still a spectacular lunch.

I go back to the farm every summer and haul away as many bags of berries as I can afford. At $2 a pound, it’ s a pretty good deal—especially since a few end up digested before the loot gets weighed. As someone who has spent nearly $5 for a mini-box at the grocery store, $2 per pound feels like hitting the blueberry jackpot. So of course, every summer I end up with a surfeit of them. And every summer they’ re gone within a week.

From baking to eating, it’ s fleeting.

If you’ re looking to put away a huge amount of fruit in a very short time, I suggest a crumble. I think I ate this more quickly than I baked it. My sister and I, after a few glasses of wine, polished off two-thirds of the thing after dinner. The rest went down for breakfast in the morning.

A crumble goes well with Mascarpone cheese, or a dollop of vanilla ice cream. It’ s a bit juicy, which is nice, because the liquid can be spooned over your dairy of choice and turned into a warm coulis. The crumble is worthy of thirds, and as I jabbed a bit extra off the top while serving myself yet-another-piece, I had a vision of myself at 5 years old, pilfering dots off the top of my Grandmother’ s Entenmann’ s Crumb Coffee Cake while she was up from the table, serving herself tea.

But this is so much better than Entenmann’ s. The buttery, crunchy topping (which tastes caramelized because of the baked brown sugar) goes perfectly with the slightly tart blueberries that melt and bubble out from the sides. Nothing cloyingly sweet or overwhelmingly heavy here.

If you find yourself with an extra 6 cups of berries to spare—quite an embarrassment of riches—make this. Make this! In under an hour you’ll have astonishingly beautiful, delicious results. It’ s a great way to pay homage to the fleeting pulchritude and flavor of summer’ s favorite fruit, which is of course, your favorite summer fruit, whatever that may be.*

Blueberry Crumble

Serves 6

6 c blueberries (or any summer fruit, cut finely)
¾ c flour plus 1 tbsp
½ c packed brown sugar
¼ c granulated white sugar
4 tbsp butter, cold, chopped into small pieces.
1 tsp cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350.

Wash and thoroughly dry the blueberries, then toss with 1 tbsp flour and ¼ c white sugar. Transfer to a pie pan.

In a medium sized bowl, mix the flour, brown sugar and cinnamon. Add the butter with your fingers until small crumbles form throughout.

Distribute the mixture evenly on top of the blueberries, starting at the center. I like to leave a little room on the edges for the blueberries to poke through.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until the top is quite brown and the blueberries have bubbled.

* Some fruits may not be as juicy as berries, and you may sacrifice your coulis…

1 c Greek or organic plain yogurt

1/4 c blueberries

1tbsp local honey

1/4 cup pine nuts and 1/4 c granola plus 1 pinch for topping

I place 1/4 c granola at the bottom of a shallow dish then top with yogurt, drizzled with honey. I then place blueberries and pine nuts on top, with a sprinkling of granola. To make this more dessert-y omit granola and add a bit more honey. You can also use ricotta cheese in lieu of yogurt. It has a thicker texture and does well with a bit of lemon zest.

When blueberries are not in season, dried fruit is a great substitute as is sliced melon or red grapes. I know it sounds strange, but grapes and yogurt are a great combination.

If you’re having people over on a weekend, put out individual plates of ingredients like fresh berries, granola, cereal, various nuts and dried fruit and let them arrange breakfast to their liking. It’s a lot simpler than pancakes.