Blueberry Schlumpf

If you're like us, you look to the seasons for what to cook. Get to the market, and we'll show you what to do with your haul.

Today: If you can get your hands on wild blueberries, make this. If you can't, make it anyway.

You may be asking: What is a schlumpf?

Where does it come from? How does it relate to a cobbler, a grunt, a sonker, or its etymological doppelgänger, the slump? And why am I berating you with one more fruit dessert, at the end of the Summer of Strangely Named Fruit Desserts? 

My answer is this: when you have a family recipe with a funny name, you must share it. Especially when it requires five ingredients, one bowl, one pan, one spoon. Especially when it is sweet. 

For over a century my grandmother's relatives have spent their summers in Sorrento, Maine. My parents just recently hopped on the bandwagon, and they now spend the month of August summering. Nearly everyone there is a cousin, whether honorary or second or once removed. And at every gathering, my father's cousin Hasso always brings out a large pan full of blueberry schlumpf: a gooey mess of wild blueberries, topped with a second mess of sugar-butter-flour pebbles. Mess two sinks into mess one.

As I write this, my parents are up in Maine, engaging in leisure activities. I remain in New York, envious, closing my eyes hard and remembering the colors that the sky turns over the Atlantic when the sun begins to set and the clouds diffuse orange and pink light. 

I pick up a pint of Not Maine Blueberries at the market, and I do my best to fill the schlumpf-sized hole in my heart. 

Blueberry Schlumpf

Makes one 8 x 8 pan

For the filling
1 quart wild blueberries (conventional will do)
2 tablespoons flour
2  tablespoons sugar

For the topping
1 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup butter

See the full recipe (and save and print it) here.

Photos by Eric Moran