Blueberry Boy Bait (ATK)

• servings: 12

Ingredients

Cake

2 cups plus 1 teaspoon all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

¾ cup packed light brown sugar

½ cup granulated sugar

3 large eggs

1 cup whole milk

½ cup blueberries, fresh or frozen (see note above)

Topping

½ cup blueberries, fresh or frozen (see note above)

1/4 cup granulated sugar

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions

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

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

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

Notes

Forget the funny name-after one bite of this moist and simple blueberry coffee cake, you'll be hooked, too.

A summer without fresh baked trip to the beach without a sunburn-it just ain't gonna happen. But when a friend had me over for a cup of coffee, she brought something new to the table. Much more than a moist yellow sheet cake topped with a layer of blueberries and crisp cinnamon sugar, it was possibly the best coffee cake I'd ever eaten. I asked what it was. "Blueberry Boy Bait," she replied. I asked for the recipe. "Family secret," she answered. Some friend. I just had to find this recipe. A 1964 edition of the Appleton (Wiscon- sin) Daily Herald as well as two Chicago papers—a 1971 Suburban Economist and a 1956 Daily Herald-featured nearly identical recipes for Blueberry Boy Bait. But none of the recipes explained the name, and none of them were good—they all produced a dry, cottony cake with hard nuggets of streusel.

In a 1954 edition of the Chicago Tribune, I finally found the person who started it all. A 15-year-old girl named Adrienne (aka Renny) Powell of Chi- cago entered her dessert-Blueberry Boy Bait—in the junior division of the 1954 Pillsbury Grand National Baking Contest. She won second place, which included a $2,000 cash prize plus a promise to print her recipe in Pillsbury's 5th Grand National Recipes Cookbook. Renny named the cake (a family recipe) for the effect it had on teenage boys- one bite and they were hooked. This left me with one question: Where was this recipe when I was a teenager? I was happy to finally find Ms. Powell, but her original recipe was tricky. I found a simpler version in the 1969 Pillsbury's Bake Off Dessert Cookbook. This cake was moist and tender, and I especially liked that blueberries were stirred into the cake batter as well as on top, making every bite berry-packed. But the best part was the topping. No more dry, crumbly streusel-just a sprinkling of sugar and cinnamon, which baked up into sweet, crispy flakes, just like my friend's cake. My adjustments were minor. For deeper flavor, I exchanged the short- ening for butter and half of the granulated sugar for brown sugar. For more structure, I added an extra egg. And since this cake has "blueberry" in its name, I doubled the amount. Finally, I invited my friend over for coffee and watched as she silently ate a piece of my Blueberry Boy Bait. "Tastes just like humble pie," she said, "Where'd you get the recipe?" grinning. "Family secret," I said. -Bridget Lancaster

If using frozen blueberries, do not let them thaw, as they will turn the batter a blue-green color.

This coffee cake has a crunchy cinnamon-sugar topping and is chock-full of sweet blueberries.

Cooks country August/September 2006