Classic chewy cookies studded with fresh blueberries – or bilberries, if you can get them. Easy to make, perfect summery treat. They need to be eaten within a couple of days from baking, which is no hardship at all.
German cookies? Whoever heard of such thing – is it even a thing? It turns out it is and very delicious they are too.
When is a biscuit a cookie?
I think we have more precise labelling for small sweet baked objects in Britain, than they have in America. Over there, everything is a cookie: even meringues, even biscotti, even sponge fingers. How very generic!
While we in the UK make a very sharp distinction between (NB of American provenience) cookies and all the rest.
Cookies in my and most Britons’ books are large, flat, sprawling confections, chewy in the middle and crisp around the edges; more often than not featuring chocolate chips. They are disgustingly delicious and manifestly different to jammy dodgers or digestives.
So there we have it: they invented the thing across the ocean and then went and started calling everything else by its name. Apart from scones, which they call biscuits and serve with a meat stew. The mind boggles!
You don't have to be Italian to make pizza
I’m not sure what the Germans call biscuits (probably Kuchen: yet another nation with a blanket moniker for sweet stuff), but the recipe for the cookies below is labelled ‘blueberry cookies’ in the original German version from Lecker online magazine. Not even Blaubeeren cookies!
I was naturally slightly suspicious but then remembered that I was myself less of an authority on borscht than I was on pizza. Thus a German recipe for cookies might be a very good one indeed as ethnicity does not guarantee culinary proficiency – whatever some culture warriors might maintain.
They don’t last, but is it even an issue?
Back to the recipe: it is simple and very good. The slightly unusual element is the use of fresh fruit: it is much more customary to see dried fruit, raisins, cranberries and such stuff in cookies. Fresh blueberries also make the cookies’ shelf life limited. But they taste lovely enough to make that issue moot.
Are bilberries blueberries?
Small European blueberries (bilberries) are better to use in this baking exercise than the enormous cultivated blueberries, but alas! the former rather rare in England. Therefore, pick smaller blueberry specimens so they are more like bilberries: firmer and less squishy.
Of course dried blueberries can be added instead of fresh but they will change the unique character of these cookies, though make them less perishable.
Personally, I’d rather use fresh fruit and eat all the cookies really quickly.
How to make blueberry cookie dough?
Just like any other cookie dough: by creaming butter with sugar and adding an egg and flour. A good thing about this recipe is that the dough doesn’t need to chill forever in the fridge: some cookie recipes require chilling for positively cruel lengths of time. I mean, how long can you wait for your cookie?
When baked, they should be only a little coloured around the edges. And because of the sogginess risk thanks to fresh blueberries, it is best to keep them uncovered, just on a plate. They will soften too much in a jar and turn almost back to raw cookie dough. Unless it is your thing, obviously.
More cookie recipes
These are the cruel type of cookie dough I mentioned – they make you wait for 24 hours before you can bake your first triple chocolate chip cookie!
One of my oldest cookie recipes taken from the back of a Carnation condensed milk tin, and still a favourite: soft cookies with chocolate and dried cranberries.
And another well-known classic: oatmeal and raisin cookies. They are not particularly healthy (well duh – they are cookies!) but are able to deceive you into thinking they are because of the oats.
More blueberry baking recipes
Cookies with blueberries might be unusual but muffins certainly are not. Blueberry muffins: as easy to make as they are to eat.
Focaccia with blueberries, a sweet twist on traditional Italian flatbread, makes perfect breakfast.
And you should definitely try the blueberry variation on the Victoria sponge theme: this one is a buttery sponge layered with lightly roasted blueberries and fresh whipped cream.