Today was a trip to one of our local blueberry farms to get the yearly supply of wild blueberries.  After freezing 8 liters and then putting another 2 in the fridge for eating over the next couple of weeks – it was a hankering for baked blueberry dessert that arose.  Tired of the usual crisp or crumble, it was time for pudding cake.  A nice moist crumb cake topped with a thick blueberry pudding, perfect straight out of the oven or cooled down to toddler-snacking-temperature.

What you need for the blueberries:

• 4 cups fresh blueberries (frozen works too)
• 1/3 cup water
• 1/3 cup maple syrup (more, up to double, if you want a very sweet dessert; with fresh berries our family prefers the cake sweeter and the berries on the tart side)
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon or lime juice
• 1 tablespoon whisky (optional but nice, feel free to use more if desired!)
• 2 teaspoons arrowroot

What you need for the crumb cake:

• 2 cups whole wheat or whole spelt flour
• 1/2 cup Sucanat or coconut sugar
• 3 teaspoons baking powder (I like making my own with baking powder, cream of tartar and arrowroot, using the recipe in Rebecca Wood’s The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia)
• 1 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 1/3 cup sunflower oil
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract (I use a home-made extract that’s heavy on the rum and weaker on the vanilla beans, you may want to tone the amount done if your vanilla extract is supercharged)

What you do:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 F and lightly grease a 9×13 inch baking dish.
2. In a saucepan stir together the blueberry ingredients.  Bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally.  Cook 3 or 4 minutes at the simmer and remove from heat.
3. In a mixing bowl, sift or mix together the flour, baking powder, salt and Sucanat.
4. In a large measuring cup, whisk together the applesauce, oil, maple syrup and vanilla extract.  Add to the flour mixture in the bowl and mix to combine.
5. Spoon the batter into the baking dish and spread in a thin layer.  It will look like there isn’t enough batter – don’t worry – there is.
6. Pour the berries over the top of the batter and spread in an even layer.
7. Bake 25 minutes.
8. Cool a bit and then cut and serve.

Variation:

• Swap out the blueberries for raspberries, chopped cherries, quartered strawberries or a combination thereof; adjusting the maple syrup as necessary for the sweetness of the fruit selected.