The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter

…With a Downeast Blueberry Cake That Can’t Be Beat

From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Newsletter (July, 1985)

The blueberry season is about to dawn and with it the awful realization that I’ve done it again: left my last year’s supply of fresh-raked berries in frozen storage, practically untouched, for a year.

Every summer we drive up to Aimo’s fields in Waldoboro for our supply of the blues we love to rake. We freeze them—and then we hoard them—making a point of forgetting them, at least for a while, so we can feel rich and smart later on, when we plan to haul them out little by little for occasions that might call for accents of dark blue splendor.

Through the winter, we are onto other things, and the stashed blueberries start earning interest. An infrequent pie is presented only to guests deemed truly worthy. Thus, a comfortable reserve is maintained. And more or less forgotten.

And thus, as another July comes around, we face blueberry season once again, with about fifteen quarts of the frozen fruit buried in the archaeology of a year’s cold storage.

We are under no obligation to go up to Aimo’s this year or any other year. The berries currently in our custody will make perfectly acceptable pies, muffins and coffee cakes all summer and into fall and another winter, if we continue on our miserly course. But we simply must go: to see the blue-eyed Finn again, his pine-lined berry fields, his old white cape house and weathered barn with the dark red dahlias crowding its corners.

As July warms up the coast, we begin to recall the pleasure of visiting with Aimo at his table after an hour in the field. We are tired from stooping and damp with sweat, our fingers stained purple. Aimo serves us the best refreshment imaginable: a glass of cold water from his well.

It could be argued that we don’t need all those blueberries every single year—two of us can rake thirty-two quarts in less than an hour, even counting time-outs for stolen mouthfuls, sky-watching and informal nature study. And Aimo the amiable Finn would no doubt give us a glass of water any time we asked, even if we never picked another blueberry.

But we suspect a change in the ritual might ruin everything and rake we must. The next three or four weeks until we see him again will give us just enough time to dispose of the remainder of last year’s take. We’ll let it be known around the neighborhood that we have blueberries for pre-season baking, packed in pie-size quantities, free to good homes. Some of the berries, in cahoots with sliced oranges, will become blueberry marmalade. And finally, we’ll make those true-blue pluperfect pies for any and all guests, whether they deserve them or not.

Then, at last, there will be room in the freezer for this year’s fresh fortune, to remind us all through next fall, winter, spring and part of next summer, of how wealthy we are in the things that really matter.

Amie’s Headnotes

Sorry, Mom, real Downeasters know the best berries come from the barrens in Washington County, the greatest blueberry producing region in the country. Your midcoast fields may be filled with tasty berries, but the further east you go, the juicier and sweeter the berry. All the rain in Maine this summer has led to a crop bonanza, and the fields are awash in blue.

This recipe comes from a dear friend’s mother, whose own mother, Muriel, first passed it down to her. Back in the 1920s, Muriel’s father was the lighthouse keeper at West Quoddy Head Light, in Lubec, Maine, where the rising sun first strikes the nation…as far east as you can go in the US before your feet land in Canada. Muriel and her siblings grew up in that lighthouse and picked the local berries every summer for this cake.

MAMMIE’S BLUEBERRY CAKE

• 1 stick butter or margarine

• 1 ½ c. sugar

• 2 eggs

• 1 c. buttermilk

• 2 ½ c. flour, plus 2 T., set aside

• 1/2 t. baking soda

• 1 t. salt

• 1 ½ c. blueberries

Cream together butter, sugar, eggs and buttermilk. Add in flour, soda and salt; mix well.

To prevent blueberries from sinking at the bottom of the cake, wash the blueberries using a sieve or bowl. You want them to be wet so the flour sticks to them. Toss the reserved 2 tablespoons of flour with the wet blueberries, until evenly coated. 

Add the floured blueberries to the cake batter and fold them in. The flour coating will help them adhere to the batter and not sink to the bottom.

Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes in lightly greased and floured 13x9 pan.

Amie’s Endnotes

If you’re not lucky enough to live in Maine with access to its sweet little blueberries, which in my humble opinion are hands-down the best in the world, at least use Wyman’s wild blueberries, flash-frozen and picked in both Maine and Canada. They've been growing there long before the two countries were even settled. You can find Wyman’s in select grocery stores and Trader Joe’s freezers. Any other berries, including those giant beastly ones that line many a produce aisle, simply will not do. Sorry, Oregon, you’re not on the “right” coast!

---

From the C & T Mailbag, new subscriber Victoria K, writes:

As a subscriber to the original Cook & Tell, I’m so glad you’re reviving it. Am still making the meatloaf recipe and the ratatouille from the original. I also contributed a very delicious recipe for blueberry crumb cake. I visited Maine several times many years ago (my grandmother was born in Machias*) and arranged to visit Karyl who most graciously welcomed me.

I found your Substack when I Googled Cook & Tell…Good for you continuing your Mother’s legacy.

Here’s Victoria’s recipe, from the August 2009 issue!

*Fun Fact: Machias, the Washington County seat, roughly translates in Passamaquoddy as "bad little falls,” a reference to the Machias River. It’s also home of the 46th Annual Wild Blueberry Festival, held August 18-20, 2023.

---