A New Kind of Coffee Cake

You know summer has come to Florida when it’s time to pick blueberries. In northern states, blueberries may signal that summer will soon wind down, but here we kick off summer with them. The other day, looking about for a new way to use them, I remembered a recipe I read about quite a while back, Blueberry Boy-Bait.

You have to sit up and pay attention when you read a title like that. I do, at least. Even though I have a man and a boy (husband and son) who will come slobbering no matter what I bake, it’s nice to know there’s a fail-safe treat to beguile even the most sports- or action-figure-absorbed male around. The recipe was created by a teenager in Philadelphia in 1954 and entered into the Pillsbury $100,000 Recipe and Baking Contest, where it won second place in the junior division.

The first time I came across this recipe was in Nigella Lawson’s delightful book How to Be a Domestic Goddess. Nigella gives the same history of the recipe as I have given, and then proceeds to re-invent it. Her version features a crumb-thickened custard base, a gooey fruit layer, and a meringue topping.

But the original recipe, which I found in The Complete America’s Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook, 2001-2010 and which is the source for the recipe repeated here, was more what I was looking for at the time, a moist coffee cake studded with blueberries and sprinkled with the simplest of cinnamon-sugar toppings.

Blueberry boy-bait indeed. Maybe I’ll just have a second piece myself.

Blueberry Boy Bait
2 cups (10 ounces) plus 1 teaspoon unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon table salt
16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
¾ cup packed (5 ¼ ounces) light brown sugar
½ cup (3 ½ ounces) granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup whole milk
½ cup blueberries, fresh or frozen (unthawed if frozen)
Topping:
½ cup blueberries, fresh or frozen (unthawed if frozen)
¼ cup (1 ¾ ounces) granulated sugar
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

For the cake: Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 13 by 9-inch pan.

Whisk together 2 cups of the flour, the baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl. With an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugars on medium-high speed until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating until just incorporated. Reduce the speed to medium and beat in one-third of the flour mixture until incorporated; beat in ½ cup of the milk. Beat in half of the remaining flour mixture, then the remaining ½ cup milk, and finally the remaining flour mixture. Toss the blueberries in a small bowl with the remaining 1 teaspoon flour. Using a rubber spatula, gently fold in the blueberries. Spread the batter into the prepared pan.

For the topping: Scatter the blueberries over the top of the batter. Stir the sugar and cinnamon together in a small bowl and sprinkle over the batter. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean, 45 to 50 minutes. Cool in the pan for 20 minutes, then turn out and place on a serving platter (topping side up). Serve warm or at room temperature. (The cake can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.)