A few weeks ago, I offered several recipes featuring blueberries. Your response? More, please. So, I am pleased to present a few exceptional recipes in which blueberries – and lemons – merge sweet with tart to enhance cool and creamy desserts fashioned as pie, cheesecake and bars. Earlier this year, Devin Davis’ Blueberry Lemon Cream Pie was the 2015 American Pie Council (APC) National Pie Championships Professional First Place Winner in the blueberry category. Distinguished by its lemon cookie crust and layered lemon cream and blueberry sauce filling, the pie is as irresistibly attractive as it is delicious. Next up is Easy No-Bake White Chocolate Cheesecake – a velvety-textured creation, crowned with homemade fresh blueberry topping that is a lot simpler to make than it looks. Last, but certainly not least, is the recipe for perhaps the most luscious lemon bar I’ve ever eaten. Created by professional caterer Peggy Beck, the bars are thick and rich with eggy, lemony goodness and stands higher (and thicker) than any other lemon bar I have baked before. Peggy likes them topped with a blueberry sauce sweetened with agave nectar – a natural sugar substitute. Fresh blueberry season is here. Prices are good, making this a good time to squirrel away some blueberries for the freezer, too. Choose berries that are a deep indigo color, with smooth tight skin covered on top with a silver-gray “bloom.” And, just in case you didn’t know, bloom is a good thing – Mother Nature’s way of protecting her fruit from environmental damage. Cool right? But, blueberries are cool for other reasons, too. They taste great, they are packed with nutritional benefits, and their cool blue color looks good on everything.
Sue Ade is a syndicated food writer with broad experience and interest in the culinary arts. She has worked and resided in the Lowcountry of South Carolina since 1985 and may be reached at kitchenade@yahoo.com.