Blueberry Delight with Lemon Cream: Using Community Cookbooks

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Blueberry Delight with Lemon Cream is a restaurant worthy, delicious and unique celebration of blueberries in the summer. Affiliate links have been used to link to items I am discussing in this post.

Bet you guys thought I forgot all about using those community cookbooks. I might have too, except I had already chosen the next one before I went in for the surgery. I picked it back up these past few days, determined to find a dessert to make. And came up with something truly original–in 2014 anyway.

The book in question is The Good Templar Cook Book of Treasured Recipes published by The Good Templar Park Women’s Auxiliary in 1954, I am guessing somewhere in the upper midwest, as the recipes have a heavy Scandinavian theme (the cookbook features “The Complete Smörgåsbord”). At over 200 pages, the book has a lot of recipes to choose from, especially in the dessert department. If it had been fall or winter I have no doubt I would have chosen a sweet bread or cookie, but because it is summer I instead went looking through the berry recipes.

So about this actual dessert. In the cookbook it was made with raspberries (I’m not a fan) and only suggested serving with whipped cream. It was called simply “Raspberry Delight”–a very old fashioned name for a dessert but I decided to keep it in deference to Evelyn Swanson, the author of the recipe. I had no idea what to expect when I made this. And would it be considered a meringue? With only 20 minutes in the oven, it comes out still soft and jiggly, but firms up while it cools. For me, the recipe as written would be too sweet and needed a jolt. So I added lemon juice to the blueberries and lemon curd to the whipped cream. That put this recipe over the top. Everyone in my family adored it.

As a reader of blogs, I often get annoyed by my own slouchy, ugly creations when the blog I am looking at has some beautiful composed dish. So let me just be upfront and say the only way you will get this dessert to look like my pictures is to use something like a biscuit cutter or glass–and it will create scraps (that your husband will happily eat). I did it once for the pictures–but otherwise we ate slouchy, sloppy, delicious sliced yet uneven squares!

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Blueberry Delight with Lemon Cream

Adapted from The Good Templar Cook Book

Course: Dessert

Author: TheSpicedLife

Ingredients

For meringue:

• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 10 oz blueberries, frozen or fresh
• 4 egg whites

For crust:

• 1 1/2 cups (189 g) AP flour
• 1/4 t fine sea salt
• 3/4 cup butter
• 3 T sugar

For lemon cream:

• 2 cups heavy whipping cream
• 3 T powdered sugar, to taste
• 3/4 cup lemon curd

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F.
2. First begin the meringue filling, as it will need to cool: Whisk together the sugar, water, lemon juice and cornstarch in a small saucepan. Place on medium heat and add the blueberries. Whisk until thickened. Pour into a large bowl and set aside to cool.
3. While it is cooling, make the crust: whisk together the flour and salt and set aside.
4. Beat the butter until creamy. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl and add the sugar. Beat until fluffy. Mix in the flour in 2 additions. The mixture will be quite crumbly.
5. Line a 9X13 pan with parchment paper. Dump the crust crumbs out into the pan, and press the crumbs evenly into a firm crust.
6. Bake for 20 minutes.
7. While it is baking, whip the egg whites until stiff but not dry. Fold them into the cooled blueberry mixture (mine was a little warm)--do your best to not deflate the egg whites, but mix completely until no streaks remain.
8. Pour onto the crust and smooth the top even. Return to the oven to bake for another 20 minutes, until delicately browned but still a little jiggly.
9. Set aside to cool.
10. Before serving, whip the heavy cream until thickened. Add 3 tablespoons of powdered sugar and beat some more. Taste the cream--it should be a little sweet, but not a lot because you are still adding lemon curd. If you think you want it sweeter, add more powdered sugar now.
11. Beat until almost whipped and then add the lemon curd. Beat until thick.
12. Serve the lemon curd whipped cream on top of the individual slices of the Blueberry Delight.