Blubarb!

Today's post is about baking!  I love baking.  And I had a flat of blueberries to work with!  While my children would have happily sat down and eaten the berries by the handful (and believe me, they've been doing plenty of that), I wanted to take the opportunity to turn at least some of them into delightful baked goods.

Hands off!

I'll start with the blueberry-rhubarb crumble that inspired the title of this post, so you won't be kept in suspense.  Like most people, I usually only associate rhubarb with strawberries, but since I had a plethora of rhubarb, a glut of blueberries, and nary a strawberry, I decided that I would be the VERY FIRST PERSON EVER to combine rhubarb and blueberries.  Well, imagine my surprise when a simple google search turned up hundreds of blubarb recipes.  Well, not using that term.  But still.

In any case, I chose this crumble recipe, and since I had also made a blueberry pie I decided I wanted to serve this crumble over yogurt for breakfast.  What?  I cut the brown sugar in the topping in half to make it healthy*.

OK, so I actually cut the berries in half also, to make it more oatmeal-y.  Oatmeal = breakfast.
 I baked it in an 8x8 instead of a 9x13.

Verdict?  Yummy.  Will eat for breakfast AND dessert.

If you are making this for breakfast, I recommend making the crumble topping the night before, so that all you have to do is stir the fruit with some sugar and flour, then top it with the crumble and bake in the morning.  I stuck it in the oven as soon as I got up, and it was done an hour later.  Can you believe I planned ahead and did that?  I NEVER do that--I guess blubarb is inspirational.

Before making this crumble, I made a blueberry pie.  And it is wonderful.  And it is, as Sandra Lee would say, semi-homemade.  I want to be embarrassed to announce that I used a Trader Joe's pie crust, but you guys.  I have made lots of pie crusts in my time, and the TJ's crust is SO GOOD.  So good.  And while I don't even think that pie crust is actually that difficult, it is challenging to wrangle small kids and keep the dough at the optimal temperature, and then also OH MY GOD the cleanup, so I share with pride that I have started buying these frozen crusts and so far I'm not looking back.

I almost cried when I went to Trader Joe's on Baking Day and they were out of crusts.
I had to go back the next morning when they got more in, and I bought three of them.
I'm not messing around.

For the filling, I followed the recipe from my trusty Baking Illustrated, which I absolutely love.  I used the pulverized tapioca, since I didn't have any potato starch on hand, and I don't know if it's the recipe or my Pampered Chef stoneware pie plate, which I LOVE, but this pie comes out nicely set, even if you can't possibly wait the recommended minimum of four hours and cut into it after only three so that your patient child can have a slice before bedtime.

My slice.  The boy's was much smaller--I'm not sharing that much of my pie with a  three-year-old!

Up next:  blueberry freezer jam, blueberry banana bread, some amazing rhubarb custard bars, and probably more pie.  I love summer!

*"healthy"