My favorite for blueberries is this recipe for muffins:

Blueberry Muffins (makes 12)

1/2 c rolled oats

1/2 c orange juice

1 1/2 c flour

1/2 c sugar

1 1/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 c oil

1 egg, slightly beaten

1 c blueberries

2 tbs sugar

1/4 tsp cinnamon

Use paper baking cups or grease 12 muffin cups.

Combine oats and juice; stir well. Add flour, 1/2 c sugar, baking powder, salt, b. soda, oil, and egg.

Mix well. Stir in blueberries. Fill cups 2/3 full.

Blend 2 tbs sugar and cinnamon; sprinkle over batter.

Bake at 400F for 18-22 min. or til golden. 210 calories each.

eta: I'm glad you posted this and that I saw it! I completely forgot about blueberry picking this year.... I just called and they're open here, he said they're loaded with berries. Can't wait to get over there... it's $2.50/lb this year, organic U-pick. :)

Oh yum! Blueberries are available in stores here most of the year, but they don't grow here, and when I was a kid, if they were seen at all, it was for one week, and very dear. We have boatloads of strawberries, but I'm somewhat allergic. I love blueberry jam, but more the European style, with less sugar. A lot of syrup and jam recipes drown the berries. But other than the standard jams, muffins, etc., and just straight up or in oatmeal, or whatever, my favorite blueberry recipes are ones where they're not even the star, but make all the difference.

I think I've posted these before:

1. Blueberry Apple pie. Standard low sugar apple pie. Sliced granny smiths, and maybe a gala or pink lady, hint of cinnamon in the crust, and a good dusting of it on the apples. After filling the bottom crust with the apples, pour about 6 oz, of blueberries, over them. Distribute evenly, but let them settle where they will. Add top crust and vent well. Bake as usual.

2. Three Bears Banana Bread. Adapted from Wizardnm's banana bread recipe using buttermilk. The three bears are the bananas, 3/4 cup blueberries rolled in flour, 1/2 cup lightly chopped pistachios.

3. Watermelon Sherbet (take off of a recipe by Baked by Rachel):

2 c pure watermelon juice (strained squashed watermelon), chilled
1 1/2 c White Mountain Bulgarian plain yoghurt, full fat

3/4 c granulated sugar
Pinch salt
1/2 c+ fresh blueberries (+ means don't stint, let them stick out of the measure)

In the ice cream freezer bowl, combine chilled pure watermelon juice (I used a slow juicer machine) with sugar and salt, stirring to dissolve sugar. Stir in yoghurt. Churn for a long time (50 minutes?). Add blueberries when it's mostly churned. Freeze in a chilled thermal container.

This is yummy.

Blueberry Crisp

5-6 cups blueberries (fresh or frozen)
1/4 cup sugar
1 T. cornstarch
1 T. lemon juice

2/3 cup flour
3/4 cup light brown sugar (packed)
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
6 T. cold butter, diced
Optional - 1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts

Preheat oven to 375. Butter a 9-inch square baking pan.

Toss berries gently with sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice. Place in prepared baking pan.

Combine flour, brown sugar, oats, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Cut in butter blending until mixture resembles coarse meal. If using, mix in nuts. Spread topping evenly over berries.

Bake 40-45 minutes or until top is golden and fruit is bubbling.

Just adding this from my inbox today. 🫐+🍋=👍🏻

https://my100yearoldhome.com/the-best-lemon-blueberry-recipes/

Wild or not, it was still on somebody's land and was still their berry patch.

"----- Wild or not, it was still on somebody's land and was still their berry patch. ----"

I should have indicated that, the area we were walking around was part of a large public park.

dcarch

With blueberries being as seasonal and expensive as they are, to bury them under sugar and cook them is not an option that I would choose. I only buy them if they are part of the local seasonal fruit at the farm where I shop.

If you have your own copious supply of them, that is a bit different.

We lived for years in Alaska and my mom used to pick wild berries . They were a lot of work to find and pick. She loved doing things like that!

The area I live in has thousands of acres of blueberry farms. I don't beleive there are wild blueberries anywhere, only because I have never seen any. One of my favourite things to do with fresh blueberries is my Mom's blueberry pie recipe. It is different that others in that it is not baked. 2 cups of fresh, whole blueberries go into a baked or graham crust and then topped with an additonal 2.5 cups of berries which have been cooked briefly with sugar, water and cornstarch and when translucent, removed from the heat and lemon juice and butter are stirred in. Much fresher tasting than convential baked blueberry pies. If anyone wants the recipe, I will post.

Party, I made your muffins this morning. I made the recipe as written... except: I had intended to make these last night but life interferred, and so the oats and orange juice sat together overnight. Didn't seem to hurt a bit.

The recipe turned out very good and it will go in my file folder to make again and again. Thank you for posting!

“The area I live in has thousands of acres of blueberry farms.”

nekotish, my sister lives in Seattle and I love going to blueberry farms there when we visit. We’ve picked pounds and pounds of them!

We don't have wild blueberries here. I have one cultivated plant, new this year. It's supposed to be one of the few self pollinating, we'll see how it works out. Right now I'm picking about 5 berries a day ;)

My neighbor has several plants growing in an aviary type structure that serves to keep out the birds and deer. He shares. The berries are wonderful and we mostly eat them fresh and daily. So much better than purchased and fresh, unwashed they keep a very long time in the refrigerator with no ill effects at all, no spoilage. Unlike those I buy at Costco the rest of the year. We eat a lot of berries year around.

We eat them by the bowls full, I like them with a little cream sometimes. DH eats them with yogurt. We both like blueberry pie and he especially likes blueberry jam (I've made none so far this year).

Our closest similar berry to the wild maine blueberry are wild small blue huckleberries. Not common on this side of the mountains (ours are red and not as flavorful) but neighbors had vacation property on the other side of the state and they would pick, bring us a couple of quarts each year. The blue huckleberry cobbler was a dessert saved for special occasions, we loved them.

OT but the neighbors 'aviary' (what I thought it was when we first moved in) needed a repair to its top this year. I could hear very happy chickadees and looked over there to see several entering and exiting and gorging on the berries. I didn't even know chickadees were that attracted to berries. I went through the rail fence and chased them out about three times, let him know when he returned home that afternoon. He made the repairs the next morning ;)

Birds definitely love berries. The wild turkeys come through and gorge on the wild berries. Coyotes are around to get at the turkeys. The circle of life.

A variety of small birds are nibbling on my high bush plants a bit but haven’t stripped them thank goodness.

My favorite day to day use of blue (or any other color) berries is on my oatmeal with plain yogurt. Or just by the handful. I agree that a ton of sugar and flours and baked to a semisolid pie filling isn’t my favorite. The blueberry rhubarb crumble was incredible though. Super crisp rich crumbles, tart sweet filling and piles of homemade whipped cream. We made blueberry ice cream one year. My uncle gushed for years. It was not my favorite. Maybe a blueberry syrup over vanilla ice cream.

In the spirit of the moment I will share a Bluebery Sauce that I created at least 60 years ago. My family didn't even care for pancakes unless I had this sauce to go on top. (Actually, I think the pancakes were only a carrier for the desired sauce. 😁 )

Blueberry Sauce

In a saucepan combine and bring to a boil:

1 pound (3cups) fresh or frozen Blueberries

1/4 cup water

Mash blueberries and add in:

3 tsp. fresh lemon juice

Mix together:

1/2 cup sugar

3 tsp. cornstarch

Add in cornstarch/sugar mixture and stir until thickened.

Serve hot over something good!

Last year I canned a few jars of this blueberry maple syrup . Orders are to do "way more" this year.

None of my berries are doing great this year but fortunately I have a big blueberry patch.

Kate, I'm glad you liked the recipe! My mother got it from some magazine decades ago and since I tried it it has been my go-to muffin recipe. :)

In a comedy of errors, we ended up picking blueberries at the wrong place, but we both liked this place a whole lot better! Still organic and the same price, but the owners were very friendly and they had the cutest cat, named Rocky, who kept jumping out of the bushes to play-attack us. Rocky also liked to try to tip over blueberry buckets. lol! We ended up picking about 4.5 quarts, so I froze 3 and we'll eat the rest fresh. Last night it was just blueberries and whipped cream for him, and blueberries, bananas, and whipped cream for me. Perfect.

I haven't made this recipe in ages, but I do continue to make blueberry pie fillings like this.... the blueberry filling is half fresh berries mixed with the other half that's been cooked on the stovetop. It's my favorite way to prepare fresh berries for a pie.... this recipe is essentially fresh blueberries glace', similar to strawberry glace'. :)

Blueberry bread:

Blueberry Bread {An EASY one-bowl quick bread!} | Plated Cravings

I add 1/2 tsp ground coriander to the recipe.

Recipe is also quite good with raspberries. If I make it w/raspberries, I up the sugar to 3/4 cup.

They are very expensive here. They come in tiny punnets LOL Your plants are so pretty. I'm imagining a sauce for a nice duck breast with crispy, delicious fat.

necotish, your mothers pie sounds interesting . Sometimes fruit gets so heavily sugared and cooked down that it could pass for about anything if eaten with eyes closed.

I did peaches this way last week. I had some fresh local peaches that I needed to use and I had a hankering for cake. So, I baked one layer of a yellow cake and made the peaches much like your mothers berries, to serve with the cake or to have without the cake. It was so good.

i dont bake many sweets, at all. Havent had cake in a very long time.

I saw this breakfast cake and thought it would be equally good with blueberries.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CvmsUCcsQf4/?hl=en

Man oh man, blueberry season is just starting here, so I'm marking this thread. I've never seen wild blueberries here, just wild strawberries, black berries and raspberries as well as an occasional June Berry, now called a Saskatoon I guess.

KatieC, I make blueberry syrup using LindaLou's fruit syrup recipe, but yours sounds better and ;a neighbor just traded me a quart of dark maple syrup he processed this spring for 50 heads of garlic. I'm definitely making your syrup this year!

After that I'm going to try the pie with half fresh and half cooked berries, then maybe some bread and some muffins...

THere goes my diet, LOL. I'm getting lots of exercise because Elery had that hip replaced Monday and so I'm doing all the farming, the gardening, the fence walking. And ;that's my excuse for eating blueberry pie!

Annie

My husband loves the frozen wild blueberries from Trader Joe's.

I'm making Ina Garten's Blueberry Ricotta Breakfast Cake this afternoon using fresh organic berries.

https://barefootcontessa.com/recipes/blueberry-ricotta-breakfast-cake

I miss wild blueberries that I had growing up in Mass. It was a 40 acre property. I don't remember how many acres was coved in wild blueberries but it was a lot. Every day for a week or more, us 5 kids were picking (and eating) all the wild blueberries we could get our hands on. My mom made all kinds of yummy things like muffins, pies, cakes, cobbler and pancakes. Store bought cultivated blueberries just don't taste the same.

I thought I posted a reply yesterday, but I don't see it here today 🤔

I make a berry cobbler from BettyCrocker.com. Last time I used strawberries and blueberries. I've tweaked it a bit from the original...

https://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/country-fruit-cobbler/80b5961b-29f5-4921-a9ed-af055d1c3c0f

Country Fruit Cobbler - my version

5-6 Tbs.butter or margarine

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg plus milk to make 3/4 cup

pinch nutmeg

1 tsp. vanilla

4 cups fresh or frozen (thawed and drained) blueberries, raspberries, sliced peaches or strawberries (or combination of fruit)

Heat oven to 350°F.

In casserole, melt butter in oven. (I use a 9'X13" pyrex casserole - the pan size they recommend was too small and overflowed)
Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, then add egg/milk mixture and vanilla to make a thick batter.

Spoon/spread batter evenly into casserole onto the melted butter without mixing. Spread fruit on top of batter.
Bake 45 minutes to 1 hour or until top is golden brown. Serve warm.
Makes 6 servings

And this topic reminded me of an Atlas Obscura podcast I listened to not that long ago about a guy in Maine who farms wild blueberries and burns his fields every year...

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/podcast-maine-s-burning-blueberry-fields