blueberry buckle

I never understood why a Blueberry Buckle was called a buckle until I made this. But I’ll get into that later. 🙂 I had heard of Blueberry Buckles, but had never made one or eaten one. I looked up a lot of buckle recipes and combined the things I liked best about these recipes into a whole new recipe. I had my reliable taste-testers sample it and everyone really liked it! Here’s a comment that was made by Alisa: “That was so yuuuummmyyy!!!!! I loved it! I loved the fresh blueberries and the crumbly, buttery, brown sugary crust…so heavenly!” This is like a coffee cake, but denser and more rich. There’s something about the aroma of the brown sugar and cinnamon crust that makes you want to grab a nice hot cup of coffee as you are eating this!

BATTER INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
4 cups all-purpose flour
4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup half and half
4 cups fresh blueberries (if you use frozen, you may need to increase the baking time a little)

BROWN SUGAR TOPPING:

1 1/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
2/3 cup cold butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9×13-inch pan and set aside. In large bowl, cream butter and sugar, then beat in eggs and vanilla. In medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt; add to the creamed mixture alternately with the half & half. Fold in blueberries and pour into the 9×13-inch pan.

For the brown sugar topping, combine the brown sugar, flour, and cinnamon in a medium bowl. Cut in butter until crumbly. Sprinkle this mixture over the batter in the pan. This will seem like a lot of topping, but use it all so you’ll have a nice thick brown sugar crust. Bake at 350 degrees for 60-70 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean (mine was done in 65 minutes). Cool on wire rack before cutting into squares.

Now back to why this is called a buckle…the top of this will really buckle! It won’t be smooth like a regular coffee cake…it will be kind of bumpy-looking. Here’s a look at some of that buckling action…