If you haven’t already picked up on it, Jennifer Garner loves to post episodes of her baking recipes for her “pretend cooking show.” From this lemon olive oil cake to these cloud chocolate chip cookies, Garner sure does love to bake sweet treats. So when she brought her mom onto Instagram to bake a blueberry buckle along with her, I couldn’t help but sigh aww and watch as she and her mom recounted memories as she baked. And, of course, the result looked absolutely delicious, so I wanted to give it a try myself.
The particular recipe Garner loves to make is the Blueberry Buckle by Cheryl Day from her cookbook Cheryl Day’s Treasury of Southern Baking. According to her mom, the famous actress used to love making blueberry buckle and share it with her coworkers. So I put on my apron, preheated my oven, and got to baking.
How to Make Jennifer Garner’s Favorite Blueberry Buckle
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9×9-inch square pan with butter, then set aside.
In a medium-size mixing bowl, combine sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and flour. Cut in a stick of very cold unsalted butter, mixing it together with your hands until the butter has broken down into pea-size shapes. Set the bowl in the freezer to chill.
In a small mixing bowl, mix together the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cardamom. Set the bowl aside.
Cream together room temperature unsalted butter with granulated sugar in high for 5 minutes, or until the mixture becomes fluffy. Crack in eggs, then add in vanilla extract, lemon zest, and sour cream.
Fold in the dry ingredients until just incorporated, then gently fold in the blueberries.
Scrape the batter into the pan and even out the top, then top with the buckle crumb topping that you placed in the freezer. Bake in the oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Despite the fact that this recipe made far too much crumb topping (I ended up saving half of it for another batch), I found this blueberry buckle to be absolutely delightful. No wonder Garner loves it so much! It’s light and airy, and the crumb topping is just the right amount of buttery and crispy and sugary to go with the slight tang of the cake. I was wary at first that the number of blueberries in this recipe would be too much, but I found it to be just the right amount. This buckle is the exact kind of thing I want to have with a cup of coffee for breakfast (can you eat buckle for breakfast?), and I absolutely plan on making it again this weekend. Maybe every weekend forever!
Tips for Making Jennifer Garner’s Favorite Blueberry Buckle
Half the amount of topping: After making this recipe, I found that I had way too much topping that I did not need. I ended up saving half of it and used it for another blueberry buckle in the future. So I would say if you’re only making one, you don’t need as much topping.
Sub in Greek yogurt: Don’t have sour cream on hand? A plain Greek yogurt should also do the trick with this recipe! It will add a slight tang, but it will taste just as good. I promise.
Get the recipe: Jennifer Garner’s Favorite Blueberry Buckle