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What is a blueberry slump? It's basically the same as a blueberry cobbler, except that it's cooked on the stovetop instead of the oven, making it an ideal dessert for late summer when cobbler sounds fantastic but you can't face the idea of turning on your oven. I can only speculate on why it's called a slump, rather than something a little more appealing; the dumpling topping is cooked by the steam created by covering the skillet (rather than browned in the oven), so visually it's not the most attractive dessert.
Fresh sour cherries are not a thing in California. The last two weeks of July are apparently "the" season for sour cherries, but either I'm missing all the farmers who carry them or you can only find them by special request here. In either case, this lack of sour cherries made it a little difficult for me to make this weekend's Baked Sunday Mornings assignment: a sour cherry slump. Since Caleb is such a big fan of blueberries, I decided to adapt Baked's recipe to make a blueberry slump instead.
I mostly followed the recipe in Baked: New Frontiers for the dumplings, except I replaced the sour cream with plain 0% Greek yogurt because that's what I had in the fridge. However, switching from sour cherries to ripe, local blueberries required making some serious changes to the fruit filling so it wouldn't be too sweet. I started with roughly 2 pints worth of blueberries (1 pound), which I cooked down with 6 tablespoons of orange juice, ¼ cup of Meyer lemon juice, 2 tablespoons of light brown sugar, and a pinch of kosher salt. I let the blueberry filling come to a boil, then turned the heat down and continued to let it simmer while I made the dumpling topping.
The dumpling dough comes together quickly and was pretty easy to make, although mine was crumbly even after adding a total of 200 grams (about ¾ cup) of the Greek yogurt. I didn't want to overwork the dough though, and I hoped the small crumbly bits would help to thicken up my very liquid-y fruit filling, so I didn't try to make the dough more cohesive. The dumplings get placed in 1-2 tablespoon-sized blobs on top of the bubbling fruit filling, then you cover the pan with a tight-fitting lid for 15 minutes and voila, dessert! The only major flaw in this plan was I didn't think/there was no warning about the need to very quickly yank away the lid to the pan, so all the steam that had condensed on the lid dribbled onto my dumplings and made them a little wet and soggy. Since I had the oven on anyways (to make cookies for someone who was skeptical about a dessert called a slump), I put the uncovered pan in the oven to dry the top out a little over 5-10 minutes.
I really liked the blueberry part of my slump; the filling thickened up nicely with the addition of the dumpling topping and it was well-balanced between tart and sweet. The dumplings themselves were really tender (which makes sense, given that they were steamed), but they weren't especially flavorful and there were too many of them. I would have preferred this blueberry slump a 2:1 ratio of blueberry filling to dumpling topping. I would also add some additional flavoring and texture to the biscuits, maybe via a touch of cardamom whisked in with the flour and by replacing some of the flour with rolled/partially ground oats.
Adding some vanilla ice cream made the blueberry slump better, but I would have preferred the blueberry filling, an oat-y streusel, and a scoop of vanilla ice cream - no steamed dumplings necessary.
Interested in the original sour cherry slump recipe from Baked New Frontiers? Head over to Baked Sunday Mornings for the recipe and to see how the others fared with this one.
