Category Archives: Buckle

On what possible occasion would you prepare a thing like a buckle? When you suddenly find yourself with an awkward, medium quantity of berries, that’s when. Too few for a pie, but more than you can comfortably consume on top of your breakfast cereal. Two or three cups, say. About the quantity you’d have left over after making jam, or if you stopped to raid a bush driving a back country road. Think of a buckle not as an intention, but as a circumstance.

Begin by preheating your oven to 375. Then grease an 8-inch-square pan with cooking spray or melted butter.

This is your basic creaming method sort of affair. Sift together the dry ingredients.

Combine the eggs and vanilla. Whisk them together or don’t…it’s not a big deal.

Now combine the butter and sugar in the bowl of a mixer fitted with a paddle.

Cream them on medium-high, then add a third of the flour mixture. Stir on low until barely combined.

Scrape…

…then add about half the eggs.

Stir again for about 20 seconds. Add another third of the flour, scrape and so on until all the ingredients are more or less together. An unincorporated streak of flour is, well, fine.

Add the berries. Here I have all blueberries because, well, that’s the pickle I was in. But a mix of berries is even better.

Fold them in.

Scrape the mixture into the cake pan.

Sprinkle on the streusel.

Bake the cake for about 45-50 minutes. Cool it on a wire rack for at least 20 minutes.

Slice it and serve. Cut it into whatever shape strikes your fancy…squares, circles, whatever you like. You can go surprisingly upscale with this with a little lemon-cider sauce and a creative presentation. No one will know it took you all of half an hour to prepare all the elements.

A “buckle” is a member of a proud family of impromptu American country sweets that includes slumps, pandowdies and other fun-to-say treats you may have heard of but never tried. Like other desserts of its ilk, it’s not made with anything you wouldn’t be able to find in a typical rural pantry. Which means a home cook could whip one together whenever a few cups of berries happened to walk in the door.

6 ounces (12 tablespoons) soft butter
5.25 ounces (3/4 cup) light brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 eggs
5 ounces (1 cup) all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
2-3 cups fresh berries

1 recipe streusel (the lighter version without nuts at the bottom of the page)

Fruit sauce of your choice (lemon is traditional) or ice cream, or, if you want to take it uptown a little, some crème anglaise spiked with a little bourbon.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease an 8-inch square baking dish. In the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attached, cream the butter and sugar on medium high. Meanwhile, sift the dry ingredients together into a medium bowl. Combine the eggs and the vanilla. With the machine on low, add a third of the dry ingredients and stir until not quite blended. Scrape the bowl. Add half the egg mixture, then another third of the dry ingredients, scrape and so on until everything’s used up. If there are a couple of small steaks of unincorporated flour, that’s great. A little under-mixing is a sign you haven’t over-mixed…which is good. Now gently fold in the berries.

Scrape the batter into the pan and sprinkle the streusel over the top. Bake the buckle for about 45 minutes. Cool on a wire rack and serve.