Rosalie’s Blueberry Sour Cream Coffee Cake has a density and hint of tartness that you’ll love.
BY ROSALIE HARRINGTON
The easiest and coolest dessert of the day — meaning back around 1963 — was made by coating strawberries with a mixture of sour cream and brown sugar. Along with Lipton’s onion soup, also mixed with sour cream to serve as a dip, it was right up there on every hostess’s “easy to do” list. Have you noticed that we have become more sophisticated in the kitchen? Maybe it’s due to the hundreds of cooking shows on TV, or maybe it’s about people enjoying their well-appointed home kitchens complete with restaurant-style stoves and Sub Zero refrigerators.
While we are getting more sophisticated as a food culture, we’re also becoming more casual about food and entertaining. It seems to me that most people like myself have given their “Spode” dinnerware to a local thrift shop and are exchanging it for more rustic serving dishes. The mood seems to have shifted to a more earthy and realistic approach to entertaining, thank goodness. I wish I had the time now that I gave to polishing the silver — ice bucket and all — back in the day.
I love to entertain, and setting a casual mood while preparing a special meal pleases me. However, there is a definite shortage of return invitations. I am often met with the comment “Who would invite you to dinner?” Or “People must be intimidated?” But the point of breaking bread together is being with friends and having fun, not impressing them — I enjoy being with people, it doesn’t matter to me what they know or don’t know about cooking or entertaining. I appreciate an invitation to a friend’s home, I think it is a lovely way to spend the evening — followed by an ice cold Prosecco, a hot dog or a lobster salad — as long as it is a toasted roll.
Food isn’t meant to be a serious thing. For me, it’s about the simplicity of great food and the joy of being together. And I have the memories to prove it. I remember a road trip to visit friends in Florida when my brother was five and I was eight. We would stop at the sign of berries growing on the side of the highway, whether they were blackberries, raspberries or blueberries we could spot them a mile away. My mother had the cooler with milk ready to pour over our just-picked berries for a delicious breakfast. We would stop at one of those little cabin rental places to spend the night and quickly make our way to the woods behind to look for more berries. You see what I mean? Great food isn’t complicated. I’ll tell you some more berry stories to make the point.
On a trip to Seattle several years ago, coming into the port by train I spotted the most beautiful blackberries. The bushes went on for miles beside the tracks. You could practically pluck them by the handfuls, if only there were open windows. When we arrived, our friends who were hosting us at their little guest cottage were made aware of my fascination with the berries from the train. In minutes, their two little sons and I were gathering quarts of berries. They were abundant, so we made several desserts, a pie, some muffins and for a quick fix, the one from the ’60s with sour cream and brown sugar, substituting the blackberries for strawberries. For years one of the boys would email me with culinary questions. It proved to be a great experience all around.
When I was six I won the blueberry pie eating contest at Frederick’s Park in Beachmont on the Fourth of July. It was the highlight of the day. Better than the wheelbarrow races, which I loved, and the doll carriage red, white and blue decorating contest. Although I mainly make a Crostata instead of a pie with my berries these days — because it is easier and requires only one crust — I often think of that day with my head, and clothes, covered with blueberries. No amount of bleach, my mother’s favorite cleaning chemical, could help. Of course, Dahlia (my mother) was a berry lover too.
Every year when I visited her in Florida we would spend a few hours at one of her favorite activities, a “Pick your Own” strawberry farm. It would have been more aptly named “Steal Your Own.” She would fill herself up as we picked, one for the bucket and one for Dahlia. She actually did get a little sick on more than one occasion from over strawberrying herself. “Ma, they need to be washed,” I would tell her. “You think you know everything,” would be her response. I wouldn’t complain about a thing if I could spend an afternoon picking/stealing with her now.
Being able to get local berries is always fun, but the seasons can be very short and not always cheaper — the strawberries which I have seen recently are very pricey. I hope the cost will come down in time for me to make my “American Cake” which the boys love. Red, white and blue berries decorating a sheet pan of vanilla cake, red stripes and blueberries for the states. Have a very berry Fourth!
A meal to remember
A few weeks ago, Todd and I were guests at our friends Paolo and Mercedes in Portland, Maine. In mid-May they opened a restaurant called Solo Italiano, which we’re very excited about. In a month the restaurant has already come into its own. The decor is warm and inviting, and has been completely transformed to a rich, rustic space with soul.
We are still talking about our meal … a bluefish tuna tartar from the “crudo station,” a lightly fried sage focaccia served with prosciutto and burrata (a luscious mozzarella softened with cream) followed by the most delicate potato gnocchi you’ve ever tasted, with manila clams in a light tomato sauce. Todd had his favorite handkerchief pasta from the pasta station, topped with Paolo’s award-winning pesto sauce, known to North Shore diners from the former Pride’s Osteria in Beverly, where Paulo was once chef. The miniature cannoli, all handmade, were fabulous for dessert and the most wonderful “picture Limoncello without lemons but with fresh strawberries instead.” We left with some of the bread that Paolo and Mercedes make every day and had it the next morning with my blueberry jam and revisited our meal. We keep telling ourselves it is so worth the roughly two-hour trip to Portland as we discuss whether any given day might be the right one to take a ride.
Blueberry Sour Cream Coffee Cake
I like to make these in small loaf pans. This recipe will make about five of them or four and a small round pan.
- Butter and flour the pans and preheat the oven to 350.
- In a mixer, cream together two sticks of butter that have been warmed to room temperature, with one cup of granulated sugar and one cup of light brown sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add two eggs, one at a time, that you have allowed to come to room temperature.
- Add a tbsp. of pure vanilla extract and one cup of sour cream and mix to combine.
- In a separate bowl whisk together two cups of all purpose flour with a half tsp. salt and a tbsp. of baking powder.
- On low speed, mix the flour mixture into the batter.
- Wash a pint of blueberries and drain well. Mix the berries with the batter to combine well, pressing berries slightly with the back of a mixing spoon. Do not over-mix.
- Spread the batter into the prepared pans and sprinkle with a little sugar. Bake until a knife inserted comes out clean, about 30 minutes.
- Cool 20 minutes in the pans, loosen around the edges with a knife and then turn over onto a large surface giving the pans a little bang to facilitate the cake’s release.