Buckle, grunt, slump, crisp, crumble, brown betty, pandowdy and cobbler. All are fruit + dough desserts, but the layering of fruit (top? middle? bottom?) and type of dough (streusel? pie? biscuit?) all differ. It’s basically a Choose Your Own Adventure but with dessert!
I hadn’t even planned on doing a buckle recipe (which by the way, is when berries are cooked on top of yellow cake which ‘buckle’ around the fruit when baking. Sometimes they have streusel on top, sometimes they don’t) but when I went to my in-laws allotment and saw the number of blackberries that needed picking, I thought this would be a great way to use up a lot of blackberries at once!I say ‘needed picking’ as if I was doing the picking. I wasn’t. I let Will and his dad pick them while I stood away from a safe distance, with a large tupperware in my outstretched hand. There were a lot of wasps, ok?? It was terrifying.
You could do this buckle recipe with other types of berries! I think blueberry would be amazing, maybe even raspberry. The problem with blackberries is if you even look at them too long they get squishy. By the time we had gotten home from the allotment half had been turned into a juice. What this means for the buckle is even with the proper precautions, you get a slightly wetter dough.
Tips & FAQs
One way to stop fruit from settling to the bottom, for any baking recipe and not just buckles, is to have a layer of plain batter at the bottom of your tin. Before I fold in the berries, I take a cup of the batter (or if you were making muffins for example, take a tablespoon of batter for each muffin hole) and spread it along the bottom. This gives your fruit a little batter cushion to not sink into!
When baking, I suggest wrapping the top of the pan in foil about halfway through the baking time. This will stop the streusel from browning too much.
I used a 7×11 inch pan for mine, but you could also bake this in a 8 inch square baking pan. Whenever you are baking a recipe and you don’t have the correct pan, look up the volumes that the original pan holds. So an 8×8 inch pan holds 7 cups, as does a 7×11 inch pan. While a 9×9 inch pan doesn’t sound that much bigger, it actually holds 10 cups, leaving you with a much thinner cake + a different baking time!
Blackberry Buckle with Streusel Topping
Equipment
- 8×8 inch baking pan
Ingredients
Buckle
- 120 grams all purpose flour
- 100 grams granulated sugar
- 50 grams light brown sugar
- 170 grams unsalted butter, room temperature
- 3 eggs
- 2 cups blackberries
- 1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 teaspoon lemon zest
Streusel
- 56 grams all purpose flour
- 67 grams light brown sugar
- ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon nutmeg
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- 56 grams unsalted butter, room temp and cubed
Cream Cheese Glaze
- 56 grams cream cheese, softened
- 60 grams icing sugar
- 15 grams whole milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
Make Buckle
- Grease an 8×8 inch square pan. Preheat oven to 375°F/190°C
- Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat until incorporated.
- In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Add to the creamed mixture and mix until just blended. Take one cup of batter and spread on the bottom of the tin. Then, gently fold in the berries with the rest of the of the batter. Scrape batter into the pan.
Make Streusel
- Mix flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in a bowl. Add butter and crumble with your fingers until it resembles a coarse sand. Scatter over the cake batter.
- Bake until the top is golden brown and cake has completely set, around 40-50 minutes. Cool and then cut into squares.
Cream Cheese Glaze
- Beat cream cheese with an electric mixer until smooth. On low, add the icing sugar until well combined. Pour in the milk and vanilla, beating until smooth. Drizzle over the cooled bars.
Nicola
Made this – was easy. Great recipe. Thanks