Blueberry Breakfast Buns

Breakfast at our house is usually pretty simple– cereal or toast, or on occasion a poached egg– but sometimes on weekends we like to splurge a little and have waffles or pancakes. Sadly, both of those require someone to stand at a hot waffle iron or stove and make them, while the rest of the family eats– it hardly seems fair. Breakfast casseroles are a great way to deal with this issue, especially where (as in this recipe) all the prep is done the night before, so all you have to do in the morning is pop it into the oven and wait!

I created this recipe on a whim because I saw a bag of dinner rolls on sale at the grocery store– day-old bread is probably the best because it’ll soak up moisture more easily, but you can use pretty much any kind of roll or bready item. The end result is basically French toast, stuffed with a cheesecake-y filling with nice pops of flavor from the berries. You could use raspberries, blackberries, or strawberries if you like, but I like the blueberry-cream cheese combination the best. And since we’re right in the middle of blueberry season, I recommend you take advantage of it!

Lemon-Blueberry Tart

I’ve been stretching the last jar of my batch of lemon curd from that tea party I mentioned before, and wondering why, since it’s so delicious, I don’t make it more often. So when an occasion came up to make a dessert for company, it’s hardly surprising that lemon curd was on my mind…

I decided to make a tart, and thought that some fresh blueberries would be a great complement to the tartness of the lemon curd. I dug out an old recipe for a brown sugar tart crust I’d previously used and loved, figuring that its sweetness and slight caramel flavor would add depth to the bright and zingy fruits in the rest of the dessert. And you know what? I was right!

The resulting tarts were beautiful to look at and delicious to eat– definitely a showstopper for company in any season (though I’m sure that the blueberries would be that much more delicious in summer).

Weeknight Blueberry Muffins

I make a lot of muffins these days, not least because my daughter needs something to eat for an afternoon snack at school, and I’d rather pack these (with fruit) than storebought granola bars or crackers. And while we both love the cranberry-orange muffins and pumpkin-white chocolate muffins, those really need nuts to make them shine– and nuts are, regrettably, not an option for school these days.

Instead our latest batch of muffins was the classic blueberry muffin– no bells, no whistles, no yogurt or sour cream or lemon zest to make them fancy… just a good old-fashioned muffin, tender, not too sweet, and studded with handfuls of fresh blueberries. The recipe doesn’t make a full dozen but you could easily add more blueberries to bulk up the mix– since I wasn’t using paper muffin liners I didn’t want to risk the muffins falling apart during unmolding due to an excess of berries, but looking at the finished product I think they’d be fine with a full pint of berries.

Blueberry Almond Pastries

After blueberry picking, despite having made Blueberry-Chocolate Pudding and Blueberry Breakfast Cake, we still had a ton of berries left. Luckily, with a picnic coming up and a package of puff pastry in the freezer, I was able to throw together some last-minute pastries to use up another cup or so of berries!

These are actually almost exactly the same, technique-wise, as these Peach Almond Pastries I made at this time last year– and they worked out just as well! In this case the thick blueberry compote (microwaved, not stovetop!) was accented nicely with a layer of almond paste, and provided a nice contrast to the crisp, flaky layers of buttery pastry. Try this recipe the next time you have extra fruit lying around the house– you won’t regret it!

Blueberry Breakfast Cake

With many more blueberries to use up, I turned to a recipe that came up in my Facebook feed from King Arthur Flour– blueberry breakfast cake. A one-bowl recipe that promised to be easy and delicious, it was reviewed as being almost like a cheesecake in texture, allowing the blueberries to shine through. I’m always looking for excuses to eat cake for breakfast, so I decided to give it a try.

Chocolate Blueberry Pudding

It’s become kind of a family tradition to go peach picking every summer, since my preschooler is fully capable of devouring up to four peaches a day and adores picking fruit of all kinds. However, due to an early frost this year the entire local peach crop was destroyed, so we decided to go blueberry picking instead. She had a great time, eating them right off the bush and “looking out for bears.” (because we’ve read Blueberries for Sal)

Once we arrived home with our giant 5-lb bucket of blueberries, I was informed by my daughter that we would be making pudding. Blueberry pudding. With chocolate. I’d never really heard of a chocolate blueberry pudding before, but hey, we had five pounds of berries, we could afford to give it a shot. I decided to go really simple, with a basic cornstarch-thickened pudding poured over whole blueberries– I could’ve made an egg-yolk-thickened custard with real chocolate and a berry coulis, but we’re talking about a four-year-old here, she wasn’t going to appreciate the finer details and would probably prefer the basic dessert.

Reader’s Digest(ibles): Kit’s Blueberry Corn Cake

I read The Witch of Blackbird Pond on my own as a kid, but then had it spoiled for me by my school’s making it required reading. Nothing makes you hate a book more than having to sit through your classmates’ laboriously reading aloud one paragraph at a time while you’re forced to listen and keep track of where they are so you can take your turn. Bleh.

BUT, at least the book left one abiding pleasant memory– blueberry corn cake, which Hannah Tupper (a nice old lady who is later accused of being a witch) gives to Kit (a rebellious teenaged girl in Colonial Connecticut) to comfort her after a really tough day.

Hannah had set a wooden trencher on the table with a small corn cake studded with blueberries, and beside it a gourd filled with yellow goat’s milk. She sat watching as Kit ate, taking nothing herself. Probably, Kit thought too late, swallowing the last crumb, that was every bit of dinner she had!

I think that when I first read this, I was picturing a square of cornbread with blueberries stuck to the top– kind of like how you stud an orange with cloves by sticking them all over its surface– but I’ve since realized that the author was likely referring to a single cake with blueberries stirred into a cornmeal batter.

Summer Berry Tart

With all the plump, juicy berries available in all the grocery stores lately, I’ve been eating them out of hand on a daily basis. I hate to cook them– it seems like such a waste of fresh produce– but I knew I wanted to do something special to really showcase the berries. Enter the fruit tart.

This tart is easy to make, but will make you look like a superstar. The graham crust (not crackers, but it’s got the same flavor profile) is a step above the usual pate sucree, and the flavors of brown sugar and honey really complement the other components of the tart. It also requires no rolling, bakes up nice and crisp without shrinking, and looks great. The filling tastes complex but couldn’t be simpler, and the trick of glazing the berries makes the dessert look professional. You’ll have people wondering if you actually made it yourself!

The Cake Pop Chronicles, Part I: Blueberry Muffin Balls

So I was at Goodwill the other day looking for more pretty teacups for my mismatched tea set when I saw this: a Babycakes Cake Pop Maker for just $4.99. While I have absolutely no need for yet another small kitchen appliance (and no room), I picked it up anyway. I just can’t resist the idea of making adorable little spheres of food! Plus (I rationalized to myself), my daughter will think they’re awesome.