We made our first attempts at creating something interesting from yesterday’s blueberry bounty.
The first is a sort of blueberry oat bar. It started out as an attempt at blueberry hummus. I find myself dubious of sweet hummus concoctions but gave it a try with equal amounts beans (garbanzo and white) and blueberries with aquafaba (substituted for oil), lime juice, salt and cinnamon.
Well in my haste I accidentally doubled the salt, leaving me with a bizarrely savory purple beany mess. Not to be defeated I rescued the glop with a few cups of oats, a handful of random nuts (mostly chopped pecans) and seeds (chia and ground flax), some coconut sugar and flakes, a few healthy dollops of a delightful aquafaba and date goo mix (the subject of a future post), and a quart of whole blueberries.
After baking for 45 minutes at 350F, the result ended up somewhere between a dry-ish cobbler and a wet-ish bar. The saltiness faded completely (super bland oats are great for that) and the cooked blueberries had a rich mellow sweetness that became the star of the show. You would never know there were two cans of beans hiding out. With the exception of a few tablespoons of coconut sugar, this is completely whole foods plant based. There are probably better recipes out there but not a bad rescue.
This is my first blueberry syrup. I just cooked down a pint of blueberries and a pint of water with some fresh lime juice. Once they had boiled for a few minutes I ran the mixture through the VitaMix for a couple minutes to get a nice purée and returned the whole thing back to the Windsor pan. I added date curd until the sweetness balanced with the tart and reduced by about 25%. The result is a thick essence of blueberry that is not overwhelmingly sweet and also completely WFPB.