So, we spent a lovely weekend in Holland, MI. I got to see Liz's show -- Children of Eden -- at Hope Summer Rep. (That Stephen Schwartz really does seem to prefer religion more in Godspell than Children of Eden.) We had dinner with her dad, caught the new Harry Potter (yes please), and rented us a motorized catamaran. So, good time was had, despite Liz getting a freakish sunburn on her forearms and me having a shoulder burn that kids who can't apply sunscreen get. Anyway, why are we having this walk down Michigan memory lane? While we were there we bought some amazing raspberries, cherries, and a mess of blueberries at the farmers' market. We ate most of the fruit on the boat (perhaps why we didn't pay attention to the sunscreen), but we saved the blueberries for home.
Monday night we headed to our CSA partners' hood to pick up our veg. We pooled our resources and made an amazing cobb salad. Liz made a homemade ranch dressing. My contribution was this here blueberry crisp. The answer is that it was delicious. That seemed to be the general consensus, as we just kept eating it out of the pan. It was juicy with a little bit of crispy. Brian bought vanilla ice cream and lemon sorbet. It was perfect and delicious (and pretty much gone).
So, it was easier than pie. The recipe can be found here (thanks epicurious and Bon Apetite):
All you need
About 3 cups of fresh blueberries
2 tablespoons plus 1/4 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon (I may have been heavy handed here, but it was tasty)
1/2 cup quick-cooking oats (I only had regular oats and it worked fine)
2 tablespoons all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1/4 cup sliced almonds (why these were in my freezer I don't know)
Preheat oven to 350°F. Rinse blueberries. Drain. Place berries in 9-inch glass pie dish. Sprinkle with 2 tablespoons brown sugar and cinnamon; stir to blend. Let stand until sugar dissolves and coats berries. Stir oats, flour, salt, and remaining 1/4 cup brown sugar to blend in medium bowl. Add butter and rub in with fingertips or fork until moist clumps form. Stir in almonds. Sprinkle oat mixture evenly over blueberries. Bake crisp until berries are bubbling and topping is golden, about 35 minutes.
Elizabeth * July 18 * DESSERT
The woman can bake. We did have a hard time leaving the one portion that Kelly had for breakfast. The spoons flew.
See this is what I mean. I would not have put cinnamon with blueberries to begin with. I would have read the recipe and thought, "that won't go" and left it out. Then I might have decided to add some other things. Lemon maybe, or butter, or black pepper, or garlic. (I can't lay off the garlic.) So I might have invented something new that no one ever had before, but I would never have known what a good idea cinnamon is. And I definitely wouldn't have had the discipline to do it twice. For consistency, vote Kessler every time. We had not one but two awesome blueberry cinnamon desserts in one week and now we know.
This crisp also had the added advantage of being actually good for us. Very little sugar and butter, lots of fresh fruit, good fiber topping, aand TONS of flavor. I love blueberries. I love Michigan. And despite this hellish heatwave, I love summer foods. I tell you what though, there will be no baking this week.
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