Baking a buckle

After watching an episode of Alton Brown a little bit ago, the hubs was inspired to bake something called a 'buckle'.  Up til that point, the only buckle I knew of was found on belts and on a pair of creepers I owned back in the late 80s.

   


The husband said the buckle had been easy to assemble and bake.  I know it was certainly easy to eat.  Inspired, I then decided to make my own buckle, a 'black and blue' one, using a recipe from the super talented Stacy at Wicked Good Kitchen.

My buckle adapted from Wicked Good recipe.

'Black and Blue'

Here is the list of ingredients (with my alterations in blue) for 'wicked good' buckle:

• For the “White” Sugar Cookie Streusel
• ¾ cup (90 to 94 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour
• 6 tablespoons (75 to 80 grams) granulated sugar
• 6 tablespoons (85 grams) salted butter, cut into bits
• For the “Red and Blue” Berry Cake (I used blackberries and blueberries.)
• 1½ cups (195 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour, plus extra for cake pan
• 1½ teaspoons (7 grams) baking powder
• ¾ teaspoon (3.6 grams) kosher salt
• 10 tablespoons (about 141 grams) unsalted butter, softened
• ¾ cup (150 grams) granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons grated lemon zest, 1 medium lemon (I added lime zest too.)
• 2 teaspoons (10 ml) pure vanilla extract (I didn't have extract in the cupboard, so I used vanilla bourbon.)
• 2 large eggs (mine weighted 100 grams w/o shells), room temperature
• 2½ cups (12.5 ounces/about 388 grams) fresh blueberries, rinsed & dried
• 1½ cups (7.5 ounces/180 grams) fresh raspberries that have been washed, dried and frozen or frozen raspberries (I didn't freeze my berries because this was a somewhat spontaneous bake job.)
• Shortening or favorite cooking oil, for greasing cake pan
• For the Sugar Topping
• 1½ to 2 teaspoons granulated sugar (I didn't top with sugar.)

The hubby's blueberry buckle a la Alton Brown.

Alton's recipe culled from the Food Network website:

For the cake:
Nonstick cooking spray
9 ounces cake flour, approximately 2 cups
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
2 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature
5 1/4 ounces sugar, approximately 3/4 cup
1 large egg
1/2 cup whole milk
15 ounces fresh whole blueberries, approximately 3 cups

For the topping:
3 1/2 ounces sugar, approximately 1/2 cup
1 1/2 ounces cake flour, approximately 1/3 cup
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg

**unlike me, the hubs did not deviate from his recipe at all.

Both buckle recipes yielded very tasty results.  Of course, it seems like it's hard to go wrong with such a delightful dessert.  What I enjoyed about Stacy's recipe was the generous crumble topping and addition of zest and vanilla in the cake.  I really adore zest.  And Alton's addition of ginger in the cake and nutmeg in the topping gave his buckle a nice spice.

I told hubby that I'd like to try making a choco-buckle next.  Given how great the buckles have been so far, I have high hopes!