Episode AH0209: Well hello, and welcome to “At Home” today. We’re so glad that you could be here with us. It’s always great when you drop by. You know, I feel it’s a privilege when you allow me to come into your home. There’s a lot to see out there. There’s a lot to look at, lot to watch, but when you choose to come to “At Home” and drop by, it just makes my day. Thank you so much for doing that. We really appreciate, we have some really wonderful ladies in the audience with us today, Edith and her daughters, and some fine folks here. We’re just so glad you could be with us today. Thank you for dropping by. And we’re gonna talk about blueberries today. Blueberries, that tiny little berry. That is, oh, so good. Sweet, delicious. And I wanna give you some facts about it, and I’m gonna read ’em off to make sure that we get it all straight. This is the only berry that when you put it into a batter, it will retain its shape. Sometimes strawberries fall apart, blueberries fall apart, black raspberries and red raspberries fall apart, but not the blueberry. And it doesn’t fade when it gets baked. Blueberries shine in muffins, in pancakes, waffles, tea, and coffee cakes, biscuits, scones, and that intense flavor comes forward like a little burst of sweetness. When you eat a muffin that has fresh blueberries, it’s just wonderful. Blueberries contribute moistness to a batter or dough, as well as a certain fruity richness. And they thrive in the presence of butter, of milk, buttermilk, sour cream, or heavy cream. I didn’t know that. That’s pretty interesting. And it has a fragrance, that’s just wonderful. And it marries well with cinnamon, nutmeg, all spice cardamom, with one of them, or you could put all of ’em together. It’s pure, delicious, delicious fruit. And I wanna tell you that when you add some of these to the waffles or whatever, you wanna flour them, ’cause in flouring them, they will hold in the batter. If you’re putting them in muffins or whatever, they’ll hold in the batter. They won’t all sink to the bottom. Don’t think you can put a whole lot in there because if you put too many in, then they get mushy, and then they do sink to the bottom whether you floured them or not, it’s too much for the batter to hold. So just some little tidbits of information about the blueberry, which today we’re gonna be preparing a lot of dishes using the blueberry as the main theme. We’re gonna be right back in just a minute, but here’s today’s at home hint. Stay tuned. We’ll see you in a minute. Here’s today’s at home hint. To easily remove burned-on food from you skillet, simply add a drop or two of dish soap and enough water to cover the bottom of the pan, and bring it to a boil on your stove top. It will clean it beautifully. If you’ve got a helpful hint you’d like to share with us, we want to hear from you. Send your hint to at home hints, Cornerstone Television, Wall, Pennsylvania. 15148-1499. All right, to begin with, when you’re choosing blueberries, it’s important, they come usually in a package like this in the produce area of your store. You want to look at the bottom and see if there’s any moistness, any wetness on the bottom of the berries. Wetness will make these deteriorate, so you don’t want to have that. You can see these are nice and dry and they have the little air vents in there, which help to keep them dry. These will get mushy if they get against wetness or if there’s some spoilage, then that just starts a process that a lot of them will get mushy. So this is perfect. These are the way you want them, nice and fresh, all looking beautiful. And again, I can tell you that McGinnis Sisters has top quality when it comes to blueberries and all our fruits. First thing we’re gonna do is make a blueberry cake. And this is just, I have two and a half cups of sugar, and I’ve already creamed this, and one half cup of butter, ’cause I wanted to get a head start on making our cake. Now what I’m gonna do is just add two eggs, just like that. Okay, and you wanna make sure that they get incorporated. Eggs always add a nice richness to a batter. It certainly is doing that here. And then in another bowl, I’ve combined, turn this off. I’ve combined my flour, which is three cups of flour. And I’m going to add, this is, I’m sorry. Two teaspoons of baking powder, not baking soda. All right. And I’m gonna take my fork, because you don’t wanna just leave it in there like that. You want to mix it thoroughly. Make sure that gets down in the flour. Now, before we start to add that, I’m gonna add some vanilla. This is a couple of teaspoons of vanilla. And again, what we’re gonna start to do now that this is incorporated, we’re gonna begin to add our flour and our milk alternately to this batter that we’ve begun. Okay. We pretty much have that done now. Okay, there we are. Now I’m gonna add a little bit of milk, just like this and begin to incorporate that. Then we’re gonna add some of our flour mixture. And by doing that, you’re getting the right amount of air into the batter to make it lift. And you wanna do that. You can see it’s gonna dry, be a little dry, but that’s okay, ’cause you’re gonna add more milk to make it moist. Just like that, okay? There we go. Now again, we’ll go back and you wanna stop it, because you know what will happen. That milk will be flying everywhere and the camera will be covered. So we try not to make it too wild here. And again, we incorporate the milk just like that. And then we’re gonna add another addition of flour. And you know, you can do a lot or little or fast or slow. It’s up to you, if you have a lot of time, do a little bits of the time, it really works well that way. All right. This will make a 9×13 cake and you want to have your glass bacon dish well greased and I would grease it with butter, because that will enrich also this batter. Some people use Crisco or whatever. If I have to grease a pan for something that I’m baking, I try to use the same fat, as an ingredient in the actual batter or the cake mix. And in this case, of course it is. There’s just milk here. It is butter, so that’s what you would want. For the sake of time, we’re gonna do something, just put it all in there and let’s mix it up. Now, this is gonna mix and you’re gonna have a wonderful batter, but what you’re not gonna do is put the blueberries in here. And I know you know why, but I’m just gonna, for learning’s sake, you don’t wanna put the blueberries ’cause the mixer will mash them to death and they will be mush, and we don’t want that. We wanna cut the blueberry cake and we want it to have some really pretty nice big pieces of blueberry, whole blueberries in there. So again, we’re mixing. And the levering in this is of course the baking powder. You will want to scrape down the sides and just make sure that it’s well done. Well incorporated and blended thoroughly. Okay, now, gonna just take them off of there, and I’m going to spoon the blueberries. They’ve been thoroughly washed and cleaned. Sometimes there’s little stems in there, you have to watch them. So just keep an eye out for that. But now what we do is just fold, just like this. Let me get this out of the way here. You know, my mom always says “Clean it all out, get it outta the way.” Okay. All right, and when we do, you know how to fold, you basically just take it around and bring it up. Down and up, down and up. You don’t stir, you don’t get a big spoon in there and mash them all together, you don’t do that. Absolutely not. You’re just gonna stir in just like that. This is a wonderful batter, it’s creamy. It looks good. Blueberries are doing well in there. Now we’re gonna pour this in to our prepared pan. This goes to 350 degrees. This is gonna bake for about 30 to 40 minutes. And you want to be sure that it’s done and you’re gonna test it either with a cake tester or with a toothpick. And very nice. This is like a basic, this would be nice to do, could do for a breakfast, if you wanted to. Or a brunch, if you’re having folks in for brunch. You could do it for a summer evening, if you’re having some friends over, just to sit out on the porch, you know, make iced tea or a big pot of coffee or something like that. This is a wonderful, delicious cake. Just for that. We’re gonna spread it to the edges. Just make sure it gets in the corners, like so, this makes a nice full dish of batter, which will cause it to rise nicely. Okay. All right. There we are. Just like that. Gonna go to the oven with this, and we’re gonna put this right in. Remember, 30 to 40 minutes, we’re gonna set the timer and when it’s done, hmm-hmm-hmm. I only wish you could be here to have a piece. We’re gonna come back with another blueberry recipe in just a moment. Stay with us. We’ll be right back. Our next blueberry dish that we’re preparing is blueberry bread custard. If you like bread custard or like a bread pudding, you’re gonna like this. It has a new twist on that. And basically all you do is take slices of bread, you cut the crust off, you take five slices for an eight inch square pan like I have here. We’ve cut the crust off, then we’ve buttered it with soft butter and cut them in fourths, like that, and placed them in our pan. Here’s what we have here. That covers the whole bottom of the pan, all right? Now what we’re gonna do is take our delicious, clean, beautifully dried blueberries, sprinkle them all over the bread, like so. Just like that. And then on top of that, we’re gonna sprinkle some cinnamon and that can be to taste, much as you would want, or as little as you’d want. Now at our house, Paul loves cinnamon. I’ve been in bakeries with him and he’d say to the lady, “Now do these cinnamon rolls have a lot of cinnamon?” And she’d say, “Well, not too much.” He’d say, “Well, then I don’t want them.” She’d say, “What do you mean?” ‘Cause it’s usually, oh, that’s too much. Never too much for Paul. He loves it. Okay. So now this is ready. And what we have to do now is prepare the custard that’s gonna go over this. And what I have here in this pan is, let me see how many, we have two cups of milk and you don’t want it to boil, all you want it to do is to get hot. And to that, I have added a half cup of sugar. So it’s ready. I’m gonna turn the heat off here. All right. Now, we have to add three beaten eggs to that. But the problem is, if I would dump them into that milk, guess what we’d have. Scrambled eggs and milk. So we have to temper the eggs. And the way you do that is, you take a bit of the milk, like so, and you just pour it in here just to temper it. Just a little bit like so. And what that does, that brings the eggs to the temperature of the milk. See? And then they incorporate. And you don’t get the scrambled eggs. Okay. And now what we do instead of pouring that in here, we’re gonna pour this in here and continue to whisk it, just like that. And then what that does, it makes our custard, because we have our milk. Now we’re gonna add some vanilla to it. And then this gets poured immediately over the berries and the bread, just like that. Oh, I wish you could smell that cinnamon and that vanilla. Ooh, ooh, ooh. And you wanna make sure that it all gets soaked. Tuck your bread stuff down in there. Then this goes into a bain-marie. Now I know you’re saying, “A what?” It’s a bain-marie, it’s a water bath. So what you do is you take a baking dish, baking pan, larger than the one that you have your ingredients in. And you’re gonna put this into the oven. In fact, I’m gonna pull that out. Like so. And then what you do, is you pour boiling water into the outer pan and that makes a water bath. And it has to come up to about one inch. So you want to pour, make sure it’s boiling. You’ll see that the water will start to come up the edge of the pan, just like that. And that will help you to make the custard. There we are. Now, when you get that done, you push it back in very carefully. And that bakes for about 40 minutes, 40 to 60 minutes. And I tell you, you’ll know it’s done when the custard sets in the middle, and then you can take a knife and just go in the center. And if the knife comes out clean, you know that your custard has set. Easy and delicious. All right, one more that we have to do, is I wanna show you how to do the blueberry muffins, which seem to be a favorite for everybody, including the crew here at the station. Okay, and we’re going to, first of all, let me get this here. Okay. We have to plug this baby in here. Let me move it over here. We have so much going on in this kitchen today. You know, just hard to find a plug that’s available, but we like to do this because it helps you to understand how to make things and to make stuff for your family. That maybe is a little bit different, you’ve never done before. Okay. Now we’re set. Okay, let’s start with, in our mixing bowl, we’re gonna do four eggs and then to these four eggs and yeah, use freshest. The freshest and the best ingredients that you can find. And I tell you, people say, “Well, you know, what size eggs should I buy?” I think the rule of thumb for most recipes is a large egg, not an extra large, not, you know, jumbos or anything, ’cause that adds extra moisture to it. And that’s not good. So you wanna just do large eggs, okay? And we’re gonna start this beating. And as they beat, then we’re gonna add our sugar. And this is baked in a 400 degree oven, so you wanna make sure it’s preheated. And we’re just gonna add the sugar slowly and gradually. This makes a lot, this makes 24 muffins. I tell you that’s enough for breakfast, for lunch, for some snacks, some to put in the freezer, some to give to the neighbor next door. That makes a lot, and that’s good. That’s real good. Okay, now we’re gonna add some oil, one cup of vegetable oil, very slowly, just like this. Kind of like to do it ’till it all incorporates well. Just like that. This is vegetable oil, a light oil. You’d never wanna use olive oil because that’d be way too heavy. All right. And we’re gonna put some vanilla. There we go. Vanilla into there. Now, we have some dry ingredients here. We’re gonna let that go. And while we combine the dry ingredients, which is some salt and some baking powder and some baking soda, and again, you wanna mix this with our fork to totally incorporate it, just like that. And we have two cups of sour cream. We’re gonna add this alternately, sour cream and the dry ingredients. Similar to what we did with the cake batter. Because again, that just gives it a lift in sour cream. These blueberries love to be in that sour environment, either with butter milk or the sour cream. So this looks nice. This is coming along. Okay. And what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna pull up the whisk. I’m gonna put some of this in first. Okay. And you know what? We’re gonna take a break and I’m gonna finish putting these together. We’re gonna add these together, stir in the blueberries, put them in our blueberry cups, the muffin cups, and we’re gonna bake them off. And when we come back, we’re gonna show you the finished product. Okay? Stay tuned. Don’t you go away. Here’s how you can get today’s recipes. Now, be sure that you write and ask and request for all the recipes for blueberries, which we’ve done today. And I hope that this has been of interest to you. Little something different maybe, but I just heard recently that blueberries are one of the best fighters of cancer. They are such a good fighter of cancer, and they’re so good for you. And they’re accessible. And you don’t have to do anything to ’em. If you could just eat them raw like this, that’s fine. They’re really, really good for you. But they’re also a delicious addition to waffles and pancakes, and what we’ve prepared today, which we’ll start off, with this is our blueberry bread pudding. You can see how it’s baked. And what I’ve done, I’ve cut a piece here and all we’re gonna do is put a little bit of just some Cool Whip or whipped cream, whichever you’d prefer, just like that. To dress that up just a bit, really looks nice, I think. And then next to it is our delicious blueberry cake. Isn’t this a beauty? First of all, what you wanna do, you wanna tap just some powdered sugar all over the top of the cake. Just perks it up a little bit, or you could also, you could put some whipped cream on this if you wanted, you know, whatever your desire is, that’s fine. It works good. But this is really, really a nice addition. And when you cut it, you’re gonna cut a piece just like you would normally would a cake. Look how light that cake is. Beautiful, beautiful, and delicious. And those berries are in there. Get this first piece out. Ah! Look at that. Moist, tender, and still warm as a matter of fact. Delicious blueberry cake. Then we move on to our muffins and look at this. Aren’t these gorgeous? Beautiful, big, beautiful muffins. And you know, I did, as I suggested at the beginning, I floured down the blueberries before we added them to the batter, and you can see they’re suspended. They’re not all in the bottom. They’ve come through the batter beautifully. Some are on the top. And these only bake 20, 25 minutes. And look how many you get. Actually, we got about 30 instead of 24 out of this batch. So these freeze very well. What you’d wanna do, I would do, is if I were going to freeze them, I would wrap them individually. And I would do them as soon as I took them out of the oven, while they’re still warm, wrap them in your plastic wrap, put them into the freezer individually, put them on a cookie sheet, baking sheet, put them in until they’re frozen. You say, “But Arlene, shouldn’t they cool?” No, because what you do when you wrap them when they’re warm, you trap all that moisture inside. Just like cookies, when you freeze cookies. As quickly as you can get to it, to package them, put them in the freezer, then you’ve trapped all of that moisture in there. Then you won’t have a dry product when you bring it out and you thaw it down. It will still be nice and moist. So you can see, we have plenty of these, some for the neighbors, like I said, you know, that’s nice to do. If you have somebody new in the neighborhood and you want to welcome them, and you don’t have time to do a whole big dinner, go out and buy like a six muffin pan. Pop six of these individually wrapped into that muffin tin. Put a little piece of a wrapping around it, put an nice bow on it and just walk over and say, “Welcome to the neighborhood.” Or, you know, maybe the mailman needs a lift today, you know, just package up some of these for him. Anytime you do something that is beyond what the world would say to do, just because you have a desire to help somebody or to show them that you care, it’s always appreciated. Like we appreciate you for coming by and visiting with us today. It’s always a pleasure. It’s always a joy to see you. So be sure to join us the next time, because it just won’t be the same without you here at home. We’ll see you then.
[Narrator] Food provided by McGinnis Sisters Special Food Stores in Brentwood and Monroeville. Taste the world.
[Narrator] Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers, whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.
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