blueberry coffee cake

About 6 weeks ago, we went to pick some blueberries at Sauvie island farms. We go there pretty much every year for the last several years and this year was more fun as we had Ana help us pick berries with full gusto.

As always, we froze about 2 or 3 gallon bags full of blueberries to be used over the coming year, till next blueberry season. And I used up some of the fresh ones to bake some goodies. Plus I had canned several jars of blueberry jam last year and they needed to be used up as well. That's how this coffee cake came about.

As usual, I did not follow any particular recipe strictly or closely - and looks like coffee cakes are hard to mess up, even for me :-)

Note: if blueberry jam is not handy, just simmer some extra fresh blueberries with some sugar, stir in cornstarch to thicken into a spreadable consistency and use it instead.

Ingredients:

dry ingredients: 2/3 cup sugar 1½ cup all purpose flour ½ tsp baking powder ½ tsp baking soda

wet ingredients: ½ cup buttermilk 4 Tbsp butter 1 egg beaten

fruit filling: 2 cups fresh blueberries 2 Tbsp blueberry jam

Preparation

Heat the oven to 350°F. Grease a baking pan, keep handy.

In a mixing bowl, sift together the the dry ingredients: flour, ½ cup sugar, baking soda and baking powder.

Cut in 3 Tbsp butter to the above mixture until the mixture has the texture of fine breadcrumbs.

Combine the liquid ingredients: eggs and buttermilk; stir or beat a little to form a smooth liquid.

Gradually stir in the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients until moistened, not too runny, not too thick either.

Spread half the batter at the bottom; add the fresh blueberries and blueberry jam over the batter layer; then, scoop the remaining batter and drop them in dollops or small mounds on top.

Mix the remaining sugar and butter together and sprinkle on top.

Bake in 350°F oven for about 30-45 minutes or until done - checking half way through.