Here’s an Alaska thing: you pick blueberries and then you put a big bag filled with them in your freezer and, after that, you kind of feel weird about using them. You might call it a sort of blueberry prepper impulse—you just don’t feel right if there are not berries in your freezer. But then, for some of us, it becomes a grandma’s good china situation. You’re always waiting for the right occasion to use it, and it never comes. And then, come spring, the blueberries are still there somehow, and they aren’t even really as good as they would have been if you’d just gone ahead and used them in the fall.
So let’s use some blueberries, shall we? What I like about this recipe is that it makes a super satisfying cookie, in a soft, mall food court cookie way, owing in part to the cornstarch in the dough. It’s also an off-the-beaten path recipe for Alaska blueberries—especially frozen ones. It is refreshingly not pie, jam, muffins, pancakes, or bread. The cookies do have a streusel topping like a classic bloob muffin, but an entirely un-muffiny texture. This is a novel and worthy way to utilize your precious supply, imho.
What’s fun about these cookies is that they use whole blueberries, and just a little bit of blueberry jam cut through the dough to make veins of intense blueberry flavor. You could increase the jam by a teaspoon or two, if you’d like. The way the recipe is written, the cookies remain doughy in the center, but if that’s not your preference, bake the cookies for a minute or two longer.
Blueberry jam streusel cookies
SERVINGS: 16 COOKIES
FOR THE TOPPING
- 2½ tablespoons salted butter, softened
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon white sugar
- ⅓ cup white flour
- Pinch of salt
FOR THE COOKIE BATTER
- 1 stick salted butter, room temperature
- ¼ cup brown sugar
- ¼ cup white sugar
- 1 egg, room temperature
- 1½ cups flour
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ⅔ cup wild blueberries, fresh or frozen
- 4 teaspoons blueberry jam
Preheat the oven to 350° F. Prepare a baking sheet with parchment.
Make the topping. In a small bowl, mash butter, sugars, flour, and salt with a fork until well combined and crumbly. Set aside.
Make the dough. In the bowl of a standing mixer, whip butter until creamy. Add sugars and mix until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla, mix until combined. In a separate bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. With the mixer running on low, gently shake in the dry ingredients and mix until combined. Remove the bowl from the mixer and, using a wooden spoon, gently fold in the blueberries.
Then, using a teaspoon, plop dollops of jam in several spots on the dough and gently drag the handle of a wooden spoon through the dollops, making ribbons of jam through the dough. The idea is that the jam isn’t mixed in completely, but that there are pockets of it throughout.
Spoon the dough onto the baking sheet using a 1½ tablespoon cookie scoop or a heaping tablespoon (the top of the dough is round). Pat each cookie top with the back of a spoon and then sprinkle with streusel topping.
Bake for 12 minutes and allow cookies to sit on the baking sheet for 10 minutes before removing them to a cooling rack.
This recipe originally appeared in Edible Alaska. Subscribe!