Sprinkle With Berries

Sister E and P were vacationing on the Rocky Coast this week, with my nephews T and J, and their cousin, my niece, LD.  They made plans to visit UD and I, and we were filled with excited anticipation over the visit.  I decided to make Blueberry Buckle for them, either to have here, or to take back to the cottage with them.  Now I am not much of a baker, but I wanted to make something they would all like, and Blueberry Buckle seemed just the thing.  Well, that is where the fun horror begins.

I am including the recipe here, in case you would like it.  But I am going to just do a quick version of what I did, because it was wrong, wrong and wrong.

These are the ingredients I used.

I mixed the dry ingredients.  Then added the wet ingredients.

Here, I was supposed to beat until light and fluffy.  I would call this dense and packed.  Even though I followed the directions in the recipe, this is the exact opposite of what it should be.  Quel est le probleme?

It says to spoon the batter into the prepared pan.  I had to use a hammer and chisel to get it out of the bowl and into the pan.  What should look like silky smooth batter, looks a lot like Play Doh to me.

Sprinkle with berries.  That I could handle.

Combine the dry topping ingredients.  Using a pastry blender, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.  What the heck is a pastry blender?

I did the best I could with a fork.  But what was supposed to look like coarse crumbs...

was actually a pasty mess.  I couldn't continue like this.  It just wasn't right.  I decided to start over, with at least the topping.  So, I painstakingly removed all the "paste".

I had used softened butter, because that is what you use in the topping for the crumble.  I switched to cold butter, and it was better, but it certainly didn't resemble coarse crumbs.  More like tan clumps in tan sand.

At this point I just went with it.

When I removed it from the oven, it didn't have the golden top all over, but it was better than I expected.  All the vacationers bravely tried it, even after I explained that there had been several baking faux pas.  Surprisingly, the taste was pretty good, and the cake on the bottom was actually not as hard as cement.  It was rather soft and moist.  I don't know why, but somehow I got lucky. 

No more baking for me. Mon dieu, what an experience.

The rest of the visit was really fun.  We took a walk to the East side of the harbor for lunch, and ate at The Boothbay Lobster Wharf.  Here is the crew.  The beautiful one on the left is LD, and the planking one is T.  They are joined by beautiful Sister E and the handsome P and UD.

And of course we can't forget the very brave J, planking by the lobster traps.

We met up with a friend and co-worker of E and P.  This is the lovely V and her husband Chef S. They were both awfully nice and we were so happy to have met them.  We all indulged in delicious ice cream from the Downeast Ice Cream Factory. 

So a terrific time was had by all.  And the Buckle was but a distant memory, of a mild disaster.

A bientot!  See you soon.