Downtown Abbey’s Butterfly Cake vs Same-Old Berry Buckle

Here in the Foothills, days of wildfire haze and smoke has kept me and my husband captive indoors.

In the last 10 days, we’ve had only two smoke-free ones. And after one full week of smoke, we both needed a little (actually more than a little) consolation for being cooped up all this time. Since our big blueberry harvest means we’ve got berries coming out of our ears as the old saying goes, I decided on one of my go-to summer desserts: blueberry buckle. 

I’ve got a recipe I’ve been using for years…but I made some minor modifications to the cake portion of the recipe, to make it a wee bit healthier: some olive oil in place of the butter, and little less sugar. 

Problem:I hadn’t been too happy with this version for a while. You know when you take a bite of something you’ve baked or cooked many times, and it just doesn’t taste as yummy as you want it to? Well, that’s exactly what happened with this recipe.

Three days ago, fed up with smoke, I figured we deserved a “treatier” treat. I scoped out a bunch of recipes, looking for a richer version of the buckle I’d been making all these years. And in one of my new cookbooks, I found it!

A lovely cookbook

The Downton cookbook is wonderful for those times you really want to treat yourself and feel like the British gentry!

The recipe I found is for “Butterfly Cakes,” a cupcake recipe. Only I used it for the cake portion of my buckle. The recipe is very similar to my original buckle I posted, but with a “scosh” less flour and an additional egg. I deep-sixed the olive oil substitution to go all out on the butter, and used the full amount of sugar. 

Here’s recipe for Downton’s Butterfly Cakes:

1 2/3 cup flour

1 1/4 teaspoon baking power

1/2 t salt

Whisk the dry ingredients together

In a separate bowl:

1/2 cup butter

3/4 cup sugar 

Cream together until fluffy, then add

2 large eggs, beating well

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

But there’s one more ingredient: 1/2 cup milk, but hold on…

Add half the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture, add the milk, then blend in the rest of the flour mixture

Now here’s where I improvise: I use a 10-inch buttered pie pan

Spread the batter in the prepared pan, and top with two-plus cups blueberries (Tip: After rinsing, I let them dry on a towel to avoid adding sogginess)

For the streusel, I used the original recipe: 

For the crumb topping:

½ cup sugar 

½ cup flour

½ - 1 teaspoon cinnamon (we like cinnamon a lot)

¼ cup butter

Mix the sugar, flour and cinnamon. Cut in ¼ cup butter and combine until crumbly. Then I improvised again…

In a wonderful synchronicity, the same day, I had come across Ciara Ohartghaile’s recipe for Blackberry buckle in her “Gorse” newsletter. The recipe had a lot of similarities, then I saw she had added slivered almonds to her streusel. Brilliant!

Instead of almonds, however, I used about a 1/2 cup of toasted, chopped pecans. 

Chopped pecans add terrific flavor and a wee bit of wholesomeness

Back to the recipe: Sprinkle the streusel over the berries.

Bake at 350 degrees for around 50 minutes. I generally use more berries than the recipe calls for, so my buckle takes a longer baking time—maybe closer to 1 hour. I just watch it carefully for the last 15 minutes or so! Let it cool an hour or so to set…

Then…feast! Melt in your mouth delicious!

Awash in Blueberries!

Thank goodness for extra yogurt containers!

Ahoy, Matey! It’s mostly just pics this week, as I am currently drowning in blueberries. 

After picking until dark last night—7 quarts—I stayed up way past midnight to process the take from the previous day’s picking…rinsing, air drying on towels, then setting them on cookie sheets to freeze. That was about 5 quarts. 

For this afternoon’s project, I’m looking at about 4 quarts in the pail, and 5 in the yogurt containers.

But wait! There’s more…

I’m also thinking of making a Blueberry Buckle, one of my favorite recipes… It’s a convenient way to use up more berries!

When I come up for air, I look forward to posting about something other than blueberries! 

Thank you all for reading! Are you a gardener drowning in summer produce too? I’d love to hear from you—I’m at www.susancolleenbrowne.com 😊

Berries, A Michigan Backyard Farm, and Jane Austen!

A terrific year for blueberries!

I just can’t keep up…

With our blueberries, I mean. Our shrubs are going nuts this season: I’m harvesting five-six quarts each day, but I can’t pick and process the berries fast enough. 

In fact, I’ve had to stay up late several nights in a row to get the berries into the freezer before the next day’s onslaught of fruit!

I have only myself to blame, though—I didn’t get around to pruning my shrubs back in April. I told myself that missing a year would be okay—and this month, I remembered I’d done only light pruning the year before that.

As a result, some plants are overbearing…so as it turns out, skipping a year was not my best move. And I will probably pay the price with lower production next summer. In any event, I’m planning to give my shrubs a very thorough pruning in the spring.

Still, it’s been fabulous, eating my fill and then some every day this month!

I’ve included my fave blueberry dessert recipe in Jane Austen and the Internet , my August newsletter, just out! Besides a bit about Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility, you’ll find a quick bear update and more. My newsletter is free and open to all, so I hope you’ll take a look!

No time for reading? Here’s a terrific mini-series!

And a treat for food gardeners…

I highly recommend my favorite newsletter, The Suburb Farm, from Erin, a Michigan gardener and beekeeper! 

My family lived in central Michigan during my teen years, and Erin’s lovely, thoughtful gardening newsletter brings back good memories of days gone by. She shares lots of beautiful photos and helpful food gardening tips, and I’ve even learned a fair amount about backyard beekeeping. 

What’s truly amazing is the impressive amount of fruits and veggies she and her family produce from their backyard!

What’s especially fun for me is that her posts and pics remind me of all the Michigan summers that my sister and I picked scads of plums from our backyard tree. Despite the Midwest heat, the two of us would bake every plum dessert you can imagine. 

I imagine your August is crazy busy…but I hope you’ll take a moment to spend some time in a gorgeous Michigan garden! 

Beware the Zombie Herb

 One pot.

From one small potted herb, brought from our city garden 17 years ago, a veritable plague has sprouted. I’m talking about oregano.

I used to have several pretty perennial beds, filled with well-behaved bee balm and purple palace heuchera. But oregano, which sneaked into the beds, has pretty much sucked the vitality out of the other plants.

Once upon a time, bee balm filled this bed

As you see, there’s only a few bee balm blossoms trying to hold their own.

A couple of weeks ago, I took my little weed-eater to a bunch of oregano encroaching into my patio, and mowed it down to the nubs. Within days, it was growing again, and now there’s a bunch of perky little crowns that look stronger than ever.

Earlier this week, I was weeding a neglected, empty bed, and saw to my dismay it was carpeted with tiny oregano seedlings. Most weeds that size, you can easily pull out, no problem. But oregano has robust, wiry roots, even in the tiniest plant.

I took a hoe to the seedlings, but I don’t have a lot of hope my puny efforts will keep them from growing. 

Once the crown gets established, you’re in trouble. 

Are you a fan of All Creatures Great and Small? I just started the series, and there’s always lots of scenes with the young veterinarian attending a cow giving birth, and having the pull like mad to get the calf born. 

Pulling on a well-established oregano crown from the soil feels something like this! And if you’re like me, yarding out oregano guarantees you a wonderful case of elbow tendonitis. 

Gardeners in the know tell you to beware of mints: keep them in a pot, or a separate bed. But contain them, whatever you do. 

But in my experience, mint of all sorts, even the hardy peppermint, has nothing on oregano. 

The bed below used to be a lovely little herb garden, of thyme, lavender, and yes, a variety of mints: chocolate mint, spearmint, and peppermint. Now it’s oregano from stem to stern…

Oregano has just about smothered the mint here!

Just like with rock-paper-scissors, and scissors cuts paper and paper covers rock, well, here’s the deal:

Oregano covers everything.

I’ve been imagining that left to its own devices, oregano could cover every inch of our garden, then start growing around the house and up the walls—until the entire structure is encased in it, much like Sleeping Beauty’s castle was surrounded by thorns.

So I have had it with oregano!

This fall, I have vowed to try and get a handle on all this oregano. Starting with smothering it over the winter, then digging up the roots in the spring. I can only hope the oregano roots are weak and frail after being treated so badly. 

If you’re trying to get rid of excess oregano, show it no mercy…Otherwise, this never-say-die herb will completely take over!