BLUEBERRIES

I eat, I like fruits that are assertive and have some, shall we say, brass.

Blueberries, to me, are just there, sucking up oxygen. By the time you take the first chew, you are done with the fruit, so you move on to the next berry and the next and

the next until you realize you have given your mouth a workout for nothing except to have stained teeth and a purplish tongue.

Even though I would like them to have more chutzpah as fresh fruits, blueberries in baked goods deserve plenty of fist bumps.

The berries have a wonderful temperament toward high heat, softening well when baked without losing their shape.

Also, cakes, bars, breads and muffins look visually stunning studded with blue polka dots.

When adding blueberries to a cake or bread batter, you should keep basic tips in mind:

• Freeze the fresh berries before adding them, to avoid staining the sugar-egg-butter-flour mixture to an unappealing blue.

• Toss the berries with flour before adding them so they don't sink to the bottom of the muffin or cake.

• Don’t wash the berries before freezing them because, when wet, they stick together and get icy.

In pies, the blueberry filling needs tender loving care, especially when the berries are ripe. Thickeners such as cornstarch and flour could mute the fresh-fruit flavor, and simmering the berries to reduce the excess liquid could mean once again muffling the fresh flavor.

One way to get the filling to have a jamlike consistency is to use commercial pectin or add grated apple, which contains a lot of natural pectin.