Yes, blueberries are a tasty addition to traditional pumpkin bread. Our test cook baked several loaves this week, including one for friendly neighborhood used car dealer Marv Carey, who just turned 92 on Monday.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
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At 92, Marv Carey is probably the oldest active car dealer in the Wyoming Valley. Here, he celebrates his birthday on Monday with a loaf of pumpkin blueberry bread from the Times Leader test kitchen.
Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader
Mary Therese Biebel
Times Leader Test Kitchen
I’m not one of the cronies who spend hours shooting the breeze with Marv Carey in the tiny office of his Wilkes-Barre car dealership, where one of them once told me “All we need is a cracker barrel” to complete the cozy scene.
I’m not even one of the hundreds, if not thousands, of customers who no doubt have been happy to buy a reliable vehicle from Marv during the seven decades he’s been selling used cars.
But I do have a soft spot for Marv, who struck up a conversation with me a few years ago as I was walking by his business on the corner of Blackman and Brown streets.
He’d been reading my food columns, he said, and he liked them. Some of the recipes reminded him of the way his mother used to cook.
Since that first conversation, I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been passing Marv Carey’s Auto Sales on foot and stopped to chat. He liked my recipe for cabbage salad, he said. He likes knowing we’re both fans of sardines. He wanted to see more recipes for soup.
For me, it’s been gratifying to know this friendly neighborhood businessman is such an avid reader of the Times Leader. It almost makes me feel as if I’ve stepped back in time to a place like Andy Griffith’s fictional Mayberry.
Last Saturday morning I was walking by Marv’s parking lot and encountered his son, Bruce, who mentioned his father would turn 92 on Monday.
“Will he be here that day?” I asked. “He’s always here,” Bruce said.
It didn’t take me long to decide to bake something for Marv’s birthday.
With canned pumpkin in the cupboard and blueberries in the freezer, I suspected those two flavors would go well together. After a quick online search, I settled on a recipe for Blueberry Pumpkin Bread from countrysidecravings.com/.
The recipe yields two loaves; I put a candle in one on Monday and took it to Marv’s office, where some friends were on hand to help sing “Happy Birthday.”
“They gobbled it up,” Bruce told me later.
As for the second loaf, my family made quick work of it. Ah, but what about the newsroom taste testers?
Fortunately, even though the loaves take a relatively long time to bake, it takes hardly any time at all to mix the ingredients. So it wasn’t difficult to make two more loaves on Tuesday night. One of my reliable test testers, page designer Lyndsay Bartos, also celebrates a birthday this week, so I wanted her to have a piece.
She starts work later in the afternoon, and I served the earlier arrivals first.
“It’s very moist, and I love blueberries,” said reporter Hannah Simerson, who added, “but I don’t like pumpkin, so I’m kind of at war here.”
“Pumpkin isn’t something I’d go out of my way to eat, although I don’t object to it,” reporter Kevin Carroll said. “But I really like blueberries. Overall, it’s tasty.”
“Blueberries aren’t the first thing I’d expect to go with pumpkin, but they are a nice touch,” reporter Margaret Roarty said, noting she had expected the loaf would “be a little sweeter.”
I agreed it was not very sweet; that’s one of the qualities I like about it.
Later in the afternoon, Lyndsay and news editor Roger DuPuis were the last to taste the pumpkin bread/birthday cake — and both appreciated the cinnamon and other spices.
“I liked the mix of spices,” Lyndsay said. “And the blueberries.”
Success!
Now, for the recipe, from the Countryside Cravings food blog:
Pumpkin Blueberry Bread
3½ cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1½ cups granulated sugar
4 large eggs
2½ cup pumpkin puree
¾ cup neutral oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups blueberries
Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease the bottoms only of 2 9×5 loaf pans or line with parchment paper; set aside.
In a large mixing bowl combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, and sugar. Add the eggs, pumpkin puree, oil, and vanilla. Mix just until moistened. Fold in the blueberries.
Divide batter evenly between the prepared pans. Bake for 60-70 minutes or just until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on wire rack for 10 minutes then remove loaves from pan. If using parchment paper remove immediately. Cool completely before slicing.
