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!