Friday Food Finds
21: Blueberry bonanza
For the last five years (with the exception of 2020) I’ve been going to Maine at least once a summer to visit some (pretty amazing) friends of mine. Traditionally, my trip includes a morning of blueberry picking, and I come home eager to incorporate the literal fruits of our labor into all my cooking and baking. This year however, the heat and other priorities kept us away from the blueberry patch. That has thankfully proven inconsequential though, as the blueberries around where I live are plentiful, and this week was ripe with blueberry kitchen projects.
First on my agenda: discovering a new blueberry muffin to love. Now, I like a lofty muffin that’s nice and voluptuous on top, yet so often I feel that homemade recipes result in rather puny muffins with stumpy tops. That’s not the case with these Vegan Blueberry Muffins from Nisha Vora at Rainbow Plant Life.
These are as sumptuous as muffins get with their tall and plump tops and generous quantity of blueberries. I was particularly drawn to them because of their crunchy topping, which adds nice textural contrast to the soft, tender interior. I also liked the hints of lemon, spice, and nuts Nisha incorporates into the recipe. While each of these flavors subtly distinguishes itself in every bite, none takes away from the blueberry essence of the muffin.
I will say that I underbaked my muffins by about 5 minutes. I think this was partially due to my own misjudgment of when the muffins were ready, but it was also partially a result of using all the batter to fill the muffin cups to the top. Although the recipe instructs you to do just that, I noticed in Nisha’s photos that her muffins barely ballooned outward. Mine on the other hand, not only domed, but they also mushroomed and took over the entire flat top surface of my pan. I think had I held back a little on the batter in each cup (and made one or two extra muffins), my muffins would have turned out more like Nisha’s and the bake time would have been closer to the bake time she outlines in her recipe.
In other extraordinarily plump baked goods, this recipe for Maple-Blueberry Scones (paywalled) from Joanne Chang, founder of Flour Bakery in Boston, MA, (and adapted by Dorie Greenspan) are another great excuse to bake with blueberries. I tried them not long after the recipe (and accompanying early-pandemic-era article) debuted on The New York Times’ website, and “had” to make them again recently to remind myself of their unique qualities.
Joanne employs two techniques to incorporate the butter into her scone dough. She first beats half the butter into the dry ingredients to fully coat them (a variation on the reverse creaming or paste cake-making method). Joanne then proceeds with the more traditional rubbing (or working) in of the remaining butter, leaving the 1/2” pieces mostly whole before the liquid ingredients and blueberries are added. These two techniques combined result in a scone that is both cake-y tender and recognizably flaky and scone-like.
Besides their incomparable texture, these scones are twice the size of any scone I’ve made before. They’re also the first scones I’ve ever made using a stand mixer. The size is something that you could easily adapt to your own preferences (I’m thinking a scone loaf or bread is worth trying), and you might be able to use a large food processor in place of the stand mixer. Maybe someday I’ll give that a go and report back, but if you get to it first, please let me know how it goes!
Another pandemic-era recipe I came across in my search for blueberry inspiration, was this Feel Good (Freshly Milled) Pancakes recipe from Hazim Tugun, a member of the Zingerman’s Bakehouse team. My love for Zingerman’s aside, I was drawn to this recipe because at first it’s not really like a traditional recipe. Hazim provides guidelines for how to make his style of pancakes, but the instructions and ingredient specifications really stop there. He then goes on to include a more typical recipe with a proper list of ingredients and step-by-step instructions.
Being who I am, I decided to try Hazim’s pancakes twice (yes I did eat pancakes for breakfast and lunch one day). I wanted to be sure to put to the test both the actual, more specific recipe, as well as Hazim’s looser set of guidelines. Both approaches of course worked beautifully, but I preferred the pancakes I got when I improvised on the guidelines and didn’t use my sourdough discard. To be fair, my discard was rather old, and it imparted a noticeable tang and chew that I found detracted from the blueberries I added to the pancakes.
For my second attempt at the pancakes (following the guidelines) I opted to add some cornmeal to my batter. I really enjoyed the little bit of sweetness, crunchiness, and tenderness the cornmeal added, and I think had I added the sourdough discard, some of that would have been lost. The cornmeal was also a harmonious match for the blueberries, which tasted much brighter than they did in my previous batch.
Even with the beaten egg whites, these pancakes are not the extra fluffy kind. So as long as you’re not expecting or hoping for that texture, these pancakes are a great place to start if you want to do some experimenting in the kitchen (with or without kids). They’re also a great way to get to know more different kinds of flours and how they behave. Plus, you could literally eat pancakes every day for the next year using this recipe, and not eat the same pancakes twice!
Because blueberries have some great savory applications, I wanted to be sure to include at least one recipe today that highlighted their versatility in gastronomy. This Roasted Beet and Blueberry Salad recipe from Chef Scott Graden of New Scenic Café outside Duluth, MN (adapted by Betsy Andrews) was for me a nice change from the ever-popular spinach-blueberry-feta salad.
The highlight for me in this dish is the toasted fennel seeds (and I’m not a big fennel fan). The flavor is much more toasty than anise-y and it just made all the other flavors pop that much more — the earthy beets, the sweet-sour blueberries, the spicy radishes, the creamy cheese (I used burrata rather than the mini mozzarella balls), and the fresh pea shoots. This is certainly one of those dishes you could serve at a dinner party to wow friends and family. Or you could simply make it for yourself, as a nice little lunch after a first course of pancakes (as I might have done).
And that concludes this week’s blueberry edition of Friday Food Finds. My blueberry kitchen escapades are not over though. I am part way through an Alsatian-Style Blueberry Tart from Dorie Greenspan’s latest book, Baking with Dorie. I am very excited about this recipe, so you’ll likely hear about it another time. Maybe in a tart-themed FFF edition.
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Best,
Charlotte
Charlotte, they look so nice indeed! If I don’t have vegan butter or oat milk, is it possible to substitute regular butter and regular milk?
Love, love!