New Jersey Blueberry Buckle

A streusel-topped, berry-laden coffee cake from the cultivated blueberry fields of the New Jersey Pine Barrens

Origin: New Jersey Pine Barrens, United States

From the journey of Blueberry.

The blueberry buckle is the domestic harvest cake of the American blueberry region: a single-layer coffee cake so heavily laden with fresh berries that the batter buckles under their weight as it bakes, producing the sunken, irregular surface that gives the dish its name. The buckle belongs to a family of American fruit-and-cake preparations (alongside the cobbler, the crisp, the grunt, and the slump) that developed in the New England and Mid-Atlantic colonies as domestic bakers adapted their European cake traditions to the berries of the new land. The New Jersey buckle has a particular identity within this family, because New Jersey is the original site of the commercial cultivation of the highbush blueberry. It was in the Pine Barrens of Burlington and Atlantic counties that Elizabeth White and Frederick Coville selected and cultivated the first commercial highbush varieties in the years around 1916, transforming an occasional wild harvest into a reliable farm crop. The buckle served as the domestic expression of that abundance: a way to use large quantities of fresh-picked berries in a single baking. The streusel topping, borrowed from the German baking traditions of the Pennsylvania Dutch settlers, creates a crunchy, buttery shell over the berry-laden cake beneath. The result is one of the most honest and satisfying American summer bakes.

Ingredients

Streusel

  • 75 g plain flour
  • 75 g light brown sugar
  • 0.5 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 60 g cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes

Cake

  • 225 g plain flour
  • 1.5 tsp baking powder
  • 0.5 tsp fine sea salt
  • 0.25 tsp ground nutmeg
  • 115 g unsalted butter, softened
  • 150 g caster sugar
  • 2 large eggs, at room temperature
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 120 ml whole milk

Berries

  • 450 g fresh blueberries (highbush or wild)

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 175°C (fan 155°C). Grease a 23 cm square or 24 cm round cake tin. Make the streusel: combine the flour, brown sugar, and cinnamon, then rub in the cold butter with your fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse, clumping crumbs. Refrigerate whilst making the batter.
  2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg in a bowl. In a separate large bowl, beat the softened butter and sugar together with an electric mixer for 3 to 4 minutes until pale and fluffy.
  3. Beat the eggs into the butter mixture one at a time, then add the vanilla. With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the milk, beginning and ending with flour. Mix only until just combined.
  4. Scrape the batter into the prepared tin and spread evenly. Scatter the blueberries uniformly over the batter. Retrieve the streusel from the refrigerator and scatter it evenly over the berries.
  5. Bake for 45 to 55 minutes until the streusel is golden brown and a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake (not into a berry) comes out with moist crumbs but no wet batter. The centre of the cake will be sunken and irregular: this is correct.
  6. Cool in the tin for at least 20 minutes before cutting. Serve warm or at room temperature. The buckle keeps well at room temperature for 2 days, loosely covered.
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