Blueberry Coffee Cake is Camp Cuisine
Don’t know what to make with your summer blueberries? Ask a camper!
After harvesting blueberries from our fields, some of our campers recently made a Blueberry Buckle Coffee Cake, a popular recipe from King Arthur Flour, but baked over an open campfire!
It wasn’t just a recipe for deliciousness, but a recipe for discovery. Baking requires collaboration, communication, and learning new skills. And working with farm ingredients opens up campers to some of the many ways we are all tied to the land.
“A kid can really feel like they're part of a team,” shares camp lead educator Mallory Schmackpfeffer. “We're all working on something together, both campers and adults. It's a very level playing field.”
“Just having a sense of ownership over the process is so valuable,” she adds. “Like ‘This is your job, you're in charge of adding the flour, and it's gonna have a real impact on how it turns out.'”
The photos below aren’t a step-by-step walk through the recipe. For that, follow the link above. But they show the magic – and yes, sometimes the mess – that happens when cooking with kids (or anyone)!
Cream the butter, sugar, and vanilla. It always takes some muscle and grit to do this most basic baking task by hand. Campers traded off time with the spoon.
Fold in the egg. “The kids love cracking eggs,” observes Mallory. “It's just fun, and something they might not get to do all the time.”
Add the milk and flour mix to the creamed base. Campers alternated adding one then the other.
Pour in the blueberries and gently fold them into the batter. “We kind of had a mission when we picked the blueberries,” Mallory says, “We knew we were gonna make something awesome with them.”
Sneaking a blueberry or two is irresistible.
Spread the batter into a cast-iron skillet lined with parchment paper. (The streusel topping was made and added separately.) “Kids just love that it's all so hands-on," Mallory says.
Bake it! Baking over a campfire requires some comfort with uncertainty. “It might turn out raw. It might burn,” Mallory shrugs. “But it makes for low stakes. We're all just figuring it out together.”
Stirring a side of blueberry sauce. An optional but popular topping!
Check for doneness. Cooked through (just a little char on the bottom). Time to remove and cool.
Serve it up! Educator Mallory carves up the cake into bites of yummy blueberry-ness, served with butter they shook from whole milk .
There’s no better way to experience a farm than by harvesting and eating its bounty. And there’s no better way to bond with friends at camp! That’s why preparing food together is fundamental to all our programs at Shelburne Farms.
“There's a lot of pride in it,” Mallory sums up. “They get to announce to everybody, ‘We picked these blueberries yesterday, this is what we made, and it turned out awesome.'"
Blueberry Buckle Coffee Cake
Original King Arthur Flour Recipe
Ingredients
Streusel
- 1/3 cup (67g) granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup (60g) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/8 teaspoon table salt
- 4 tablespoons (57g) butter, at room temperature, at least 65°F
Cake
- 2 cups (240g) King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon table salt
- 3/4 cup (149g) granulated sugar
- 4 tablespoons (57g) butter, softened
- 1 teaspoon King Arthur Pure Vanilla Extract
- 1 large egg, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup (113g) milk, at room temperature
- 2 cups (283g) blueberries, fresh or frozen*
Directions
- To make the streusel topping: In a small bowl, mix the sugar, flour, cinnamon, and salt. Cut or rub in the butter with the side of a fork, two knives or your fingertips until it reaches a crumbly state. Set aside.
- To make the cake: In a medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
- In a separate bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the flat beater attachment, beat together the sugar, butter, and vanilla until combined. Then add the egg and mix until combined.
- Alternately add the milk and the flour mixture to the sugar/butter mixture, ending with flour. Add blueberries. Stir only enough to blend.
- Using a small flexible or offset spatula, spread the batter into the prepared pan. (If using frozen blueberries, the batter will begin to solidify, so work quickly here. If the batter is difficult to spread, wet your hands and gently pat the batter into an even layer.) Sprinkle the streusel over the batter.
- Bake the cake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until a toothpick or knife inserted into the center comes out clean.
- Remove the cake from the oven, and set it on a rack to cool for 10 minutes. Serve right from the pan. Or, to transfer to a serving plate, Loosen the sides with a knife or spatula. Holding the pan in your left hand, gently tip the cake out onto your right hand, remove the pan, and gently right the cake onto a serving dish.