We had some blueberries that were approaching the end of their ‘circle of life’, so I looked up my trusty strawberry bread recipe, took some English walnuts out of the freezer and started stirring. As a rule, I prefer black walnuts to English (except when I make a gorgonzola-walnut terrine – I think the muskiness of black walnuts is a bit of overkill with the bleu cheese), but English is what we had stashed away; and this recipe is nothing if not a ‘use stuff up’ solution.
You’ll get two loaves out of this, and I should mention that the dough will be REALLY thick. I think the stirring smashed most of the blueberries, because even after a good 45 minute bake, the centers were still very moist while the edges were approaching crispy. My solution was to wrap the cooled loaves in foil and bake again in a slow oven for another hour or so. Another option would be to grill individual slices over low heat, or, maybe I should’ve just treated the whole thing as if it were a batch of brownies and ditched the bread pans in favor of one 13 x 9. Oh well, next time…
INGREDIENTS
•2 cups fresh blueberries
•3-1/8 cup all-purpose flour
•2 cup white sugar
•1 tbsp ground cinnamon
•1 tsp salt
•1 tsp baking soda
•1-1/4 cup vegetable oil
•4 eggs, beaten
•1-1/4 cup chopped nuts (I used walnuts because that’s what we had, pecans, almonds or maybe even roasted hazelnuts (YUM!) would easily work)
Preheat oven to 350º and Butter and flour two 9 x 5 inch loaf pans.
Combine flour, sugar, cinnamon, salt and baking soda in large bowl: mix well.
Combine oil and eggs and fold into berries. Add berry mixture to flour mixture, blending until dry ingredients are just moistened. Stir in nuts. Spoon batter into pans.
Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, or until tester inserted comes out clean. Let cool in pans on wire rack for 10 minutes. Turn loaves out, and cool completely. Obviously, if you make blue-ies, just cool and cut into bars, then store in an air tight container.
Irregardless (my ancestors are now rolling in their graves), this is a good and tasty way to use up berries getting past their prime. I would also recommend trying a slice or a bar with some chive cream cheese; I quite like the contrast of sweet and savory, you may as well.