Tag Archives: Michigan blueberries

Lemon Blueberry Bread

Are you looking for a quick and easy bread to make with local fresh blueberries?  I can recommend this Lemon Blueberry Bread.  The taste of this quick bread is light and moist with a slight lemon flavor from the lemon juice and zest.  Some recipes for this bread include chopped nuts but I didn’t use any for this recipe.

We are fortunate here in Michigan to have a lot of blueberry farms.  The blueberries I used in this recipe came from Bowerman Blueberries Farm Market in Holland, Michigan.  They were very nice looking and tasty berries.

Lemon Blueberry Bread

  • Servings: 6
  • Difficulty: easy
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1 cup fresh blueberries
1 1/2 cups plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

1/3 cup butter, melted
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 lemon, zested and juiced (about 3 tablespoons of each)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk

Glaze
1 lemon, juiced (about 3 tablespoons)
1/4 cup granulated sugar

Preheat the oven to 350° F.  Spray an 8×4 loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray and set aside..

Toss the blueberries in 1 tablespoon of the flour in a medium bowl and set aside.

Beat the butter, granulated sugar, eggs, vanilla extract, lemon juice and zest in the bowl of an electric mixer.

Combine together the 1 /1/2 cups of flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.  Add the flour mixture and milk to the butter mixture in alternating batches, beginning and ending with the flour.  Fold in the blueberries.

Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and bake for 60-70 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Cool for 30 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack.  Place a sheet of aluminum foil beneath the wire rack to catch any glaze drippings.

Combine the glaze ingredients and then drizzle over the warm bread.  Cool completely before slicing.  Store slices in an air tight container.  

Notes:
1.  Frozen blueberries can be used in place of the fresh ones.
2.  Adapted from a Taste of Home recipe.

Stay safe everyone and try to enjoy the beauty around us.

Blueberry Pie

It is summertime and blueberries are available at farm markets and U-Pick farms. I love the local Michigan blueberries. They are large and beautiful in their deep blue color, perfect for making blueberry pie.

blueberry pie

Blueberries are one of the jewels of summertime. Not only are they good, but they are good for you, providing many health-giving antioxidants.

blueberries

Recently, my daughter and I went over to Grand Haven to see the beach, have lunch and to shop. I discovered this wonderful shop that only sells blueberry related items including blueberry coffee.

Blueberry Haven
Blueberry Coffee

I didn’t buy the coffee but instead found a cookbook I couldn’t resist Beaches, Berries, and Bliss by Tiffany Balk. It is written by the owner of the shop. And, yes the cookbook is all about blueberries and interesting anecdotes from her life.
Beaches, Berries, and Bliss

I bought blueberries from the shop and used them in the pie I made for this post. The name of the shop is Blueberry Haven and is located at 213 Washington Avenue, downtown Grand Haven, MI.

With something as naturally delicious as blueberries, you don’t need a lot of complex ingredients for a great taste. This is clearly shown in the recipe for blueberry pie from Fannie Farmer in 1896.

“Blueberry Pie Recipe – Year 1896 from The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook, by Fannie Merritt Farmer, 1896

Blueberry Pie
2 1/2 cups berries
1/2 cup sugar
Flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
Line a deep plate with Plain Paste, fill with berries slightly dredged with flour; sprinkle with sugar and salt, cover, and bake forty-five to fifty minutes in a moderate oven. For sweetening, some prefer to use one-third molasses, the remaining two-thirds to be sugar.”

The above referenced Fannie Farmer cookbook is available free in eBook version from Google Books and can be found here.

The recipe for this Blueberry Pie is adapted from a recipe by King Arthur Flour. The original recipe can be found here.

Blueberry Pie

  • Servings: 6-8
  • Difficulty: easy
  • Print

1 frozen 9 inch deep dish pie crust, thawed
1 Pillsbury refrigerated pie crust
(or your favorite 2 crust pie dough recipe)

Filling
6 cups fresh blueberries, washed and drained
1/3 cup Instant Clear-Jel OR 1/4 cup All-Purpose Flour
1 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 slightly beaten egg yolk mixed with 1 tablespoon water
sugar for sprinkling on the crust

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Toss together the berries, thickener, sugar, cinnamon, and lemon juice. Pour into the crust. Roll out the top crust, making a lattice if you like; place it over the berries. Trim excess overhang, and crimp the edges together.

Carefully brush the egg wash mixture over the lattice strips and then sprinkle with the sugar.

Bake the pie for 15 minutes, then reduce the oven heat to 350°F and bake for another 40 to 50 minutes, covering the edges if they seem to be browning too quickly. When done, the filling will be bubbling, and the crust golden brown. Remove from the oven, and cool for at least 1 hour before serving.

blueberry pie 1

Notes:
1. I used the Clear-Jel (cook type) for this pie and was pleased with the way it thickened the pie, resulting in a pie that wasn’t too runny.
2. If you don’t make a lattice crust, cut several slashes in the top crust to allow steam to escape.
3. When washing the blueberries, pick out and remove any bits of stems, leaves and soft or mushy berries.

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