Blueberry

These are scones, not stones, the hard, crumbly things you may be used to. Avoid using frozen blueberries because the color bleeds too much into the dough and spoils the look of the scone. This is a side note to all the guys out there. If you bring your woman warm blueberry scones for breakfast in bed, you’ll thank me later.

This will impress your guests when you want something extra special to serve for brunch on a summer morning during blueberry season. I sometimes make an extra cake just for backup and keep it well wrapped in a round metal tin in the freezer.

Muffins used to be a healthy breakfast option, but in recent years they have become jumbo sources of fats and sugar. There’s no reason why a medium muffin shouldn’t be a reliable breakfast staple. Here’s a basic recipe that’s relatively low in butter and sugar but still completely satisfying. Once you master (and memorize) the basic formula, you can create anything you desire. Six variations follow. Rather than reduce the oven temperature here, I prefer to keep it the same as in the conventional oven, but reduce the baking time so you can bake them even on a workday morning.

This old-time dessert is still a favorite today. It’s really a streusel apple pie baked without a crust.

Semolina cooked in cream becomes a thick, delicious porridge, with an almost puddinglike consistency, that can be enjoyed many ways. In Sardinia I have had it as an appetizer with honey drizzled on top, and as a dessert with a sauce of mirto, or myrtle. I loved both! And I’ve made it as a warm breakfast treat, too. Here I give you mazzafrissa as a dessert, with a lovely blueberry sauce (strawberries or cherries or other seasonal berries would be good, too). Scoop the warm cereal into serving bowls and top with the blueberry sauce, or serve the sauce on the side and let your guests help themselves.

As with any pastry, the trick here is to keep the diced butter cold, which makes for light scones, the only sort of scones to have. I like to cut these into triangles, but rounds are lovely, too. My favorite is cranberry scones. The rich red color of the cranberries against the pale golden scones makes me wish they could just sit out on my counter all day long wrapped loosely in a kitchen towel. But once you and your family experience the moist flakiness of these lightly sweet scones, you'll know why they never seem to brighten your kitchen counter for very long.

Chris Ford, pastry chef at Washington, D.C.'s Rogue 24, brings this British-style "pudding" to picnics and BBQs. Serve with whipped cream and more berries.

This is a treat best enjoyed from July to October, when one's pail of freshly picked wild blueberries runneth over. The wild blues that stud this fluffy cake greet the eye like so many sparkling jewels plucked from a maharajah's box. It's a lovely cake to bake in the glowing embers. Set it to cook as the main course is served and, as if by magic, it will be ready by meal's conclusion.

These skillet-fried biscuits are a little sturdier than many other biscuits in order to hold the fresh berries intact. The butter bumps up the flavor as well. When they are fried, they remind me of the blueberries we picked early one morning as Girl Scouts and made into pancakes—a culinary highlight of my childhood. But they are very special baked as well. Either way, they’re a winner.

For this patriotic-themed cooler, Cabell Tomlinson combines two summer favorites: sweet iced tea and sangria. "I started thinking about the Fourth of July," she explains. "I had the red from the rosé and the blue from the blueberries. I still needed the white, but I decided to go with that oh-so-American spirit, bourbon." She uses orange pekoe for the tea and suggests a fruity rosé like a Spanish Rioja.

Like the striped pops from the ice cream truck—without the artificial flavors and colors.

These blueberry muffins are the only ones that we've made every day since Foster's opened over a decade ago. That's over four thousand days of blueberry muffins! Our customers demand them; they're delicious plain or with butter. Adding finely chopped blueberries to the batter—in addition to whole berries—is the key to these moist, flavorful muffins. They freeze well, so make an extra batch for hurried mornings.

Lemons and blueberries have complementary flavors. Here, the berries are arranged inside a lemony molded frozen mixture, to create the perfect dessert for serving at the height of the summer blueberry season. The mousse can be made up to 3 days in advance of serving.

The technique: To create a lattice top, roll out the dough, then cut it into strips. Make the lattice by draping half the strips in one direction across the filling, then draping the other half in the opposite direction, or weave the strips over and under for a classic basket-weave pattern.
The payoff: A professional-looking dessert that's sure to impress your guests. A perfect Thanksgiving treat for berry pie lovers.

The "cream" flavor in this blueberry-muffin-inspired cookie comes from one of Tosi's favorite inventions—Milk Crumbs (a streusel made from dry milk powder). The key to the soft center and crunchy edges? Scooping the dough onto the baking sheets and letting the cookies rest in the fridge overnight. Timing note: You'll need to make the Milk Crumbs before you start preparing the cookie dough.

Specialty foods stores, Trader Joe's, and some supermarkets carry dried blueberries.

Savor this sweet blueberry sauce on Greek yogurt, French toast, waffles, pancakes, and vanilla ice cream.