Berry Baking Bonanza

I love berries and eat them after every meal! My mom says that I'm her berry monster. But especially in the summer, berries are great for cooking and baking. One of our favorite things to do when we go to New York is have breakfast at Norma's. I went back to link to one of my New York blog posts where I talked about Norma's and I realized that I never blogged about Norma's!!!!!! Basically it's an amazing restaurant where they have extremely fancy and indulgent breakfast dishes. Once this quarantine business is over, I'm going straight to Norma's and I PROMISE I'll blog about it. My parents promised that we can go as soon as there is a vaccine! One of their signature dishes is red berry risotto "oatmeal" and my parents liked it so much that they bought the cookbook years ago, but then they never made it. So like lots of other recipes, quarantine turned into the perfect time! There aren't any oats in this, it's just a sweet risotto that you eat for breakfast. It's really good. We did learn though that it's best eaten fresh, and doesn't warm up as well.

At Norma's they serve this in a crispy wafer bowl. We didn't make those, but this was still delicious! Can you see the specks of vanilla bean?!

Another special berry breakfast that we had was a raspberry ricotta cake. This was super good. My mom expected the ricotta to make this more like cheesecake, and it wasn't like that at all. But the ricotta did make the cake really moist and tender. This would be a great cake to serve at a brunch!

If I were serving this at a brunch, I think that I'd put a big pile of whipped cream on top!

And this is what it looked like sliced.

A very exciting day last month was my little sister's birthday! She was born on Bastille Day, which is a holiday in France celebrating the French Revolution, and so it's a tradition that every year on her birthday, we have a clafoutis (you say it cla-foo-TEA). A clafoutis is a baked French dessert, made with fruit and a batter. It's something between a cake and a dutch baby. Other years my mom has made a delicious whole wheat clafoutis, but this year, with all of our quarantine baking, we decided to try something new. We made Julia Child's berry clafoutis. Julia Child was a very famous chef and she lived in Cambridge! I got to see her kitchen at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC last fall. My sister loved it and so did I! I don't really remember the one that we usually do, but I think that one is really good too!

We put a candle in her clafoutis and sang to her. That was actually the second time we sang, even though it was only breakfast!! My mom always wake us up with cupcakes on our birthdays. It's one of my favorite traditions!!

Of course we served the clafoutis with whipped cream!!

We haven't gone out much since quarantine started, but we did get to go on a special outing this week. Usually we go on a bunch of outings every week during the summer, but since this summer is different, going somewhere felt really special. We went blueberry picking!!! We went to Tougas Family Farm, which is in Northborough. That's where Rachel grew up and she used to go there as a kid. We had our own section to pick from because of social distancing, and it was perfect because nobody else was around. So it was a super fun and memorable day.

This is me in action! While we picked, my mom and I pretended that we were Ma and Laura from Little House on the Prairie!!

But we did go a little bit crazy picking (are you surprised?!) and ended up with a LOT of blueberries! The blueberries were incredible and NOTHING like the blueberries that you get from the grocery store. They were like a completely different food. They were more purple colored and way more firm and flavorful. My mom and brother and sister don't even like blueberries, but it turns out that they just don't like grocery store blueberries. We all couldn't get enough of these. But we had so many, that we had to do LOTS of blueberry baking.

The first thing that we made was Blueberry Rhubarb Crisp with Pistachio Crust. That's right friends, I have big news. Rhubarb is back in town!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It seems like more often rhubarb is paired with strawberries, but it turns out that it is awesome with blueberries too. I thought that the crisp topping with pistachios was really good, but my mom thought that Grandma Linda's crisp topping is way better. I don't really remember that, so we'll have to make it and I'll let you know what I think!

Of course you have to serve crisp with ice cream!

Next we made lemon blueberry cheesecake bars. These were very good, and they were one of Rachel's favorites. She really liked the citrus and blueberry combination, but I liked our other lemon cheesecake squares more. I liked the crust on those more, and they were definitely prettier. The blueberries made these look kind of messy.

One good thing about cheesecake squares is that they keep well in the fridge for a really long time!

Next we made a blueberry-pecan galette. A galette is like a free form tart. It has a bottom crust, but instead of sides, you just fold over the edges. This was spectacular. The crust is made with ground pecans and Rachel thought that made it really special. And my mom taught me a trick which is that whenever you make tart dough, double the recipe and freeze half so that the next time you want a tart, it's really easy to make. What kind of galette do you think we should make with our saved dough?!

You can't really see it in the picture, but we sprinkled sugar over the crust before we baked it and it looked really pretty.

It was excellent with ice cream on top.

We had lots of blueberry breakfasts. My mom made this blueberry cornmeal cake early one morning before she took my brother to swim practice. One of the best parts about cornmeal cakes is that the cornmeal adds texture and makes the cake a little bit crunchy.

The crunchy edges were the best part!

I highly highly HIGHLY recommend our next recipe. And I really mean the highly part! They were blueberry muffin cookies and they were amazing. We gave them to our swim instructor Kaitlin and she sent my mom an emoji with the head exploding because she thought that they were so good!

They looked a little bit weird coming out of the oven. I think that the one second from the top in the middle looks like a doggie looking to the left with his tongue sticking out!!!!

This is me drizzling on the lemon glaze, which made them look way prettier!

These were super soft and the lemony glaze was fantastic.

One of our prettiest blueberry desserts was a lime tart. We used key lime juice and the lime curd filling was delicious. I could have just eaten it plain out of a bowl. My brother really loved this and I did too. My mom served it with whipped cream and that really helped to cut the tartness of the lime curd.

This was only the prettiest until we cut it though. Once we cut it, the lime curd made a bit of a mess!

We had blueberry french toast casserole one morning before my mom went to work. This is a nice recipe because you make most of it the night before. My Grammy Marcia makes a caramel french toast recipe that is my very favorite, but this one was very good too. It was my favorite blueberry breakfast!

My mom accidentally put in too much sugar, but I loved how sweet this was.

I thought that the powdered sugar on top was the perfect finishing touch!

Another morning before my mom went to work, we had maple blueberry scones. These are blueberry scones with a maple glaze and this is another recipe that you can make most of the night before. It comes from Flour, which is a bakery here in Boston! These are very very good. I especially liked the maple glaze. I bet it would be really good on pumpkin scones in the fall!

But my very favorite berry dessert that we've made is my mom's berry cobbler! She has made this for as long as I can remember. My brother loves it. He used it as his favorite recipe in his Pre-K class cookbook. And I talked about it on my blog before, because we asked her to make it on Yes Day. Well, guess what? This year we requested it on Yes Day too! But that was for dessert. First I got to wear makeup and have chocolate milk and french toast for breakfast and I got to wear a tennis outfit and we had soft pretzels and pizza and we got to distribute our kindness rocks! Kindness rocks are rocks that we paint with nice messages and leave outside to cheer people up. We did it two years ago, but it seemed like this might be a really good year to do it again!!

These were our rocks.

And that's me leaving one by a tree.

My sister insisted on wearing wings for Yes Day. I personally would not do that but everyone has their own style and my mom said it was fine!

But anyway, I should get back to the cobbler. It is amazing. You should definitely serve this with ice cream!!

We always double the biscuit topping because we think that's the best part.

So if after reading this, you're thinking about going blueberry picking or making this cobbler, you should definitely say YES!