Blueberries Galore

Blueberries have always been my favorite fruit.  Each summer growing up, we'd go blueberry picking in Vermont.  In fact, one of my most humiliating stories involves a time when I was a toddler, went blueberry picking, and ate waayyyy to many of those...

My mom and I decided to go blueberry picking at a local blueberry farm: Frog Eye Blueberry Farm.  In no time at all, we had picked five pounds of fresh, beautiful, delicious blueberries (and I might have had 4 pints of blueberries already in my fridge).  I can eat a lot of blueberries, but not that many.  So of course, I decided to scroll through my Recipes to Try board on Pinterest and see what I could whip up!

I have now made 295 new recipes that I've found on Pinterest!  I hope to make it to my 300 goal by the weekend!  I made two blueberry recipes so far.

I made the most moist blueberry coffee cake found on Alexandra Cooks.

I had slight adaptions to the recipe (made it italics).  Here's what I did:

Ingredients:

• ½ cup unsalted butter at room temperature
• Zest and juice from 1 lemon
• 7/8 cup of sugar, plus 1 Tbl. (divided)
• 1 egg
• 1½  tsp. vanilla
• 2 cups flour 
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2½ cups fresh blueberries
• ½ cup buttermilk

Begin by creaming the butter, sugar, and lemon zest.  Then beat in the egg and vanilla until well combined.  Next, mix in the flour, baking powder and salt.  After it's well mixed, fold in the buttermilk.  End by folding in the blueberries.  Then pour the batter into a greased and floured 9x9 pan.  Sprinkle the remaining 1 Tbl. of sugar on top.  Bake at 350 for a LONG time- about 50 minutes.  At this point at toothpick should come out clean after inserting it into the middle, and the edges should be golden.

As this was baking, I began working on a blueberry cake from I adore food.  After reading the comments on this blog, I decided I would use my own recipe for lemon buttercream frosting.  I baked the cake in a deep 6inch pan.  The cake was good, but I do have to say I think my buttercream made the cake.  

Here's my own recipe for Lemon Buttercream:

1 C. butter, softened

3½ C. powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
½ tsp. lemon extract
juice of 1 lemon
2 Tbl. heavy cream

Cream together butter and sugar. Mix in the powdered sugar by adding 1/2 C. at a time.  Then mix in the remaining ingredients and beat for about 7 minutes until the frosting is light and fluffy.  

You can find my strawberry lemon cupcake recipe here, which includes this lemon buttercream. This was published in the Herald Mail for being a finalist in the cupcake competition.