I’ve never made a buckle before. I’m not sure how this New England staple escaped my kitchen, but I made my first buckle – classic blueberry – just last weekend. Though everything I’ve read says buckle can be made with other fruits, blueberry is by far the most common stir in, which makes this the perfect sweet treat for this time of year.
Local pick-your-own farms have closed down strawberry picking for the season, but blueberries are just coming in.
Call or visit your local farm online to see whether they’ve started picking yet and to check their hours.
Recipes for blueberry buckle abound online, but they’re all fairly similar. Here’s the one I used from madetobea-
momma.com, which I stumbled upon on Pinterest while searching for a fun way to use up some of the blueberries from our backyard bushes:
For the cake:
¾ cup sugar
¼ cup shortening
1 egg
½ cup milk
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
2 cups blueberries
For the topping:
½ cup sugar
cup flour
2 tsp cinnamon
¼ cup butter, softened
To make the cake, combine the sugar, shortening, egg, milk, flour, baking powder and salt.
Fold in the blueberries.
Pour the mixture in a greased 9 x 13 inch pan.
Combine the topping ingredients of sugar, flour, cinnamon and butter until crumbly.
Sprinkle the topping mixture on top of the cake.
Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Katie at madetobeamomma.com adds this note to her recipe: “If you use frozen berries your cake mixture will get quite cold and form into a large ‘ball’ when transferring to a pan. Just use a spatula or your hand to push the cake mixture to fill the pan.” I used berries straight from the fridge and found this to be true.
So if your batter doesn’t exactly “pour” into the pan, don’t worry. Just spread it out and throw it in the oven.