Huckleberries for the Holidays

Weather youandrsquo;re eating a scrumptious huckleberry pie or feasting on warm huckleberry sauce over vanilla ice cream this holiday season, huckleberries are sure to be a crowd favorite. Wild blue huckleberries look like a small blueberry however they possess a much stronger, sweeter flavor. Huckleberries are perfectly more tart and perfectly more sweet then a blueberry making them perfect for desserts. Huckleberries also have twice as many antioxidants in them as wild blueberries making them a very healthy treat too. I will share with you three of my favorite holiday recipes using wild huckleberries purchased online from Northwest Wild Foods.

So first is my favorite recipe, a Huckleberry/Apple slump. This recipe is extremely simple to make. It requires a few basic ingredients; 10 minutes prep time, 1 hour bake time and boom, a great tasting holiday dessert that will be sure to impress all your loved ones. Your ingredients will include 1.5 lbs of wild blue huckleberries, 1 box of yellow cake mix, 1 cube of butter and one thinly sliced apple. The apple and huckleberry flavors together make an irresistible combination. So let the huckleberries thaw for a few minutes, they donandrsquo;t need to be unthawed and place them into a 9 x 9 baking pan. Put your thinly sliced apple over the huckleberries then coat that with the yellow cake mix. Melt your butter in the microwave and simply pour the melted butter over the yellow cake mix. Put it into the oven at 350 degrees for about 1 hour and bam, a wonderful dessert. This is so easy to make and great tasting too. It goes great with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Enjoy!!!

Recipe two is another extremely delicious and easy huckleberry recipe. I call this my Simply Delicious Huckleberry Topping. And thatandrsquo;s exactly what it is. This recipe can easily be expanded for the whole family or just for yourself. Simply take two cups of frozen huckleberries, add them to a sauce pan over low heat and let them warm up. This will unthaw them and create lots of juice quickly. After they are warm add andfrac12; cup sugar, 2/3 cup of water 1 andfrac12; tablespoons of cornstarch and andfrac12; teaspoon of lemon juice to the huckleberries and let all the ingredients heat and mix. You can add more cornstarch if you desire the sauce thicker but this should be a good consistency. Let this mixture cool for 10 or 20 minutes and pour over ice cream. This will quickly turn any ice cream to the best tasting youandrsquo;ve ever had. Enjoy!!!

My final huckleberry recipe is a well known holiday favorite, the wild huckleberry pie. My basic recipe calls for 5 cups or 1.5 lbs of blue huckleberries, 5 Tablespoons of cornstarch, 2 cups of sugar, 4 tablespoons of tapioca, 1 teaspoon and 3 dabs of butter. Mix all the ingredients into a mixing bowl and pour into the bottom of a pie shell of a 9 inch pie pan. Dot the top of the huckleberry mixture with 3 dabs of butter and cover with the top of the pie shell. Crimp the pie crust to your desire. To bake preheat the oven to 450 degrees. When the oven is heated bake the pie for 15 minutes then turn the oven down to 350 and continue baking for 30 to 40 minutes or until the filling starts to bubble over and the crust is golden brown. Cool the pie on a rack and serve. This will make a wonderful pie everyone will love. Enjoy!!!