I’m always looking for recipes—for things that I can cook, bake, grill, sauté, etc. that promise to be tasty, easy and cheap. So a couple of weeks ago I stumbled across a recipe that made my mouth water. I saved it to make on one of my rare days off.
Well, yesterday was one of my rare days off—the first of August, a full day off after an excruciatingly long July toiling and trying to sell cars to reluctant and skeptical customers. For me the process of trying a new dish, tweeking it and making something really tasty is actually relaxing. It’s using my brain in a different way and creating something that Mrs. CB and I are going to enjoy.
This is a simple dessert using fresh berries and biscuit dough. A “slump” is a term that was used in Vermont, Maine and Rhode Island in colonial days to describe a cobbler made with local, seasonal fruit topped with dumplings and then steamed. This version goes to the step of baking the dish to set the topping and brown it.
The only thing that would make this dessert better is a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of the still warm “Slump”. (By the way, you can call this either Blueberry Slump or Blueberry Cobbler, they’re pretty much the same. I just like the name “Slump”; it’s a little bit funky).
Recipe: Blueberry Slump
Summary: Here’s a simple, old-fashioned summer cobbler dessert using biscuit dough and fresh blueberries. It’s really, really good!
Ingredients
- For the Dumplings
- 2 cups flour
- ¼ cup sugar
- 4 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- ¼-1/3 cup chilled butter or lard
- 1 ¼ cup milk
- For the blueberries
- 1- 1 ½ lb blueberries
- 1 cup orange juice
- ¼ cup lemon juice
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp cornstarch
- 2 tbsp cold water
Instructions
- Get out a mixing bowl and a spoon. Get out a 12” cast iron skillet or a baking dish and sauce pan.
- In the bowl, combine the flour, ¼ cup sugar, baking powder and salt.
- Whisk all the dry ingredients to blend.
- Cube the butter/lard and add to the bowl then use your fingers or a pastry cutter to blend into the dry ingredients until “pea-size” crumbles form.
- Add 1 cup of the milk and stir everything together. The dough should be “moist” but not “shaggy”. If needed, add the ¼ cup to get the dough to the right consistency.
- Cover bowl with plastic wrap and put in the fridge.
- Turn your oven on to 400 to pre-heat. Put your sauce pan or skillet on the stove turned on to medium-high.
- Mix the corn-starch and water together in a small bowl. (This is a thickening slurry).
- Put the citrus juices into the pan/skillet and add the sugar and salt. Then add the berries.
- Bring to a simmer while stirring so that the sugar dissolves.
- Get the dough out of the fridge and remove the berries from the heat.
- If using a sauce pan, transfer the berry mixture to the baking dish. If using a cast-iron skillet, you’ll be baking the “slump” in the skillet.
- Use a tablespoon and scoop 2-3 inch dumplings from the bowl of dough. (I use the back of the spoon to scoop so they don’t get too thick and then use my finger to gently “skootch” the dough onto the top of the berry mix).
- Lightly sprinkle the top of the dumplings with sugar.
- Put the skillet/pan on a baking sheet in the oven for about 25 minutes.
- Remove, let cool and enjoy.
Preparation time: 20 minute(s)
Cooking time: 25 minute(s)
Number of servings (yield): 8
Cheap Bastid tries to go step by step with instructions because so often I have to figure them out from something that doesn’t really tell you “how” to do a recipe in a way that an amateur like me can readily understand. (And, quite frankly I had to do the dough twice to get it right because the first time through I mis-interpreted the ingredients. So I adjusted them and then wrote the ingredients list more clearly so you can more readily “get” what goes in the dough and what goes in the berries).
I used fresh oranges and squeezed the juice from them. This was a “Cheap Bastid” decision because OJ was too pricey at the store, I didn’t want to make a separate stop just for cheap OJ and oranges were $.49 a pound. The same with the lemons. Go whichever direction you want on this. And I didn’t have any ice cream so we ate our dessert last night of slightly warm Blueberry Slump. And it’s good. Really, really good!
The Cheap Bastid Test: The blueberries cost $2.64 (3 pkgs of 6 oz. for $.88 each). The oranges cost $.56 (1 lb 2 oz at $.49/lb). The ingredients for the dough cost about $.50. And the other ingredients added about $.50. Total cost: $4.20 and this will make 8-10 servings easy.
Blueberry Slump—it’s a 250 year old recipe and it’s a really good one!
That’s the Cheap Bastid Way: Eat Good. Eat Cheap. Be Grateful!
Man, this looks good. Unfortunately, everyone I cook for is now officially on a diet. Maybe next summer.
Oooh, I have a couple of bags of blueberries and blackberries we picked a few weeks ago in the freezer. This seems like a great use for them.
looks great once again walter.. as my late dad would say..’you;re cooking with gas! 🙂
Loved It! Thanks!