Remember in Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the good one) when Violet Beauregard chews the gum and turns into a blueberry?
And the Oompa Loompas have to roll her out and take her to the juicer before she pops? Well, I kept thinking about that last week.
See what happened was, I dashed into the grocery store for Makers Mark, when I noticed that blueberries were on sale. The big, fat, juicy kind. So I quickly collected everything I needed for blueberry pie.
Since I wasn’t sure how many cups of blueberries I would need, I bought 2 pounds just to be safe.
Turns out, I only needed 1 pound of blueberries to make blueberry pie. For you mathematical types, that means I had an extra pound of blueberries. What to do, what to do…
Blueberry compote seemed like the obvious answer. Quick. Easy. Really good.
But since most of us do not eat blueberry compote all by itself by the spoonful, I thought I’d better make something to go with the blueberry compote. A compote vehicle. Beignets would be nice, I thought. But beignets sounded fancier and complicated-er than anything I was up for on a Thursday afternoon.
Luckily I remembered seeing a recipe in the Joy of Cooking for something called “Butter Puffs.” You see, friends, this is why it’s important to read your cookbooks even when you’re not cooking anything. Thank goodness I had done my research and knew about butter puffs.
Butter puffs are essentially plain muffins that you roll around in melted butter and then cinnamon sugar. They taste just like cake donuts. All by themselves, they’re amazing. But why stop there when you can spoon warm blueberry compote over them?
Not all of us, however, need a butter puff in order to eat blueberry compote. Some of us do like it all by itself, by the spoonful.
And as I watched Eleanora devour spoonful after purply-blue spoonful…
… I kept thinking of Violet’s father, Mr. Beauregard, wailing, “I have a blueberry for a daughter!”
BUTTER PUFFS WITH BLUEBERRY COMPOTE (pdf)
BUTTER PUFFS
Adapted from the Joy of Cooking
- 2 C flour
- 1 T baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 eggs
- 1 (8 oz) container sour cream
- 1 2/3 C sugar, divided
- 3 sticks unsalted butter, melted, divided
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 tsp cinnamon
Preheat oven to 400. Grease a standard 12-muffin pan or a 24-mini-muffin pan.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl, combine eggs, sour cream, 2/3 C sugar, 1 stick melted butter, and vanilla. Add this mixture to the flour mixture, stirring just until the dry ingredients are moistened. The batter won’t be smooth (which is fine – you don’t want to overmix it).
Divide the batter evenly into the muffin cups. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the centers comes out clean. Mine took about 10 minutes for the mini-muffins; standard size will take a little longer.
Melt the remaining 2 sticks of butter in a bowl. Combine 1 C sugar and 2 tsp cinnamon in another bowl. When the muffins come out of the oven, dip them in the melted butter, then roll them in the cinnamon sugar mixture. Place them on a rack to cool.
BLUEBERRY COMPOTE
- 3 C fresh blueberries
- 2 T water
- 1 T lemon juice
- 1/3 C sugar
Combine all ingredients in a heavy saucepan and cook over medium heat until the blueberry skins “pop” and the mixture has thickened slightly, about 10-12 minutes, stirring occasionally with a rubber spatula. Allow to cool, as the mixture will continue to thicken and almost gel slightly as it cools. (If you’ve ever made cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving, this is pretty much exactly like that but with blueberries.) Store in the refrigerator.
Spoon warm compote over butter puffs. Or over ice cream. Or on pancakes or waffles. Or on croissants. Or all of the above.
Oompa Loompa Doompadee Doo,