Legends of Canadian Pastry - The Blueberry Grunt

The Sweet Canada: Domestic stamps series

When it's time for some baking therapy in Atlantic Canada, some people like to make blueberries grunt. The grunting comes from the sounds made when cooking this dessert of tea biscuit dumplings cooked in blueberries. Also known as a “slump” or “fungy” (this dessert gets the short end of the stick when it comes to names), the blueberry grunt was first made either by early colonial settlers as an adaptation of British pudding using local ingredients, or as a food cobbled together by the Acadians from what they foraged in the area.  In any case, this recipe is a tasty way to take advantage of the anti-inflammatory properties, antioxidants, vitamin C and potassium that blueberries have to offer.

Ingredients

400 g blueberries (fresh or frozen)
280 g flour
225 g sugar (To cut back on sweetness, use 3⁄4 the amount instead)
115 g butter
14 g baking powder
4 g sugar
2 g salt
120 mL milk
5 mL lemon or lime juice
1 egg

Note: Measurement conversions from Cook It Simply/ 

1. Preheat the oven to 220 °C. Pour the blueberries into an oven-safe deep-dish pie plate and add the citrus juice and the larger amount of sugar. Stir well, then place the pie plate in the oven and bake uncovered, 10 to 15 minutes if you are using fresh berries, 20 minutes for frozen berries. 
2. While the berries are in the oven, whisk in a large bowl the flour, baking powder, salt, and the remaining sugar. Break the butter into small pieces and add to the mixture in the bowl. Combine the butter into the flour mixture with a fork until the butter and mixture have formed small crumbly pieces. Crack the egg into a measuring cup and top with milk until you hit the  3⁄4 cup mark. Mix the egg and milk together with a fork, then add it to the flour mixture and blend with a fork until everything is combined — mix in any remaining dry bits by hand. 
3. Take the blueberries out of the oven. Using a  1⁄4 cup measuring cup (or your largest spoon), scoop out the biscuit dough from the bowl, and arrange on top of the hot berries - you should get about 11 biscuits. Carefully cover the dish tightly with aluminum foil and put it back in the oven to bake for 15 minutes. 
4. Remove the dish from the oven and carefully remove the foil, then place back in the oven and continue to bake, uncovered, for 10 minutes or until the biscuits are lightly golden. Take the dish out of the oven, and allow it to cool for 10 minutes or so —the longer the grunt sits, the more blueberry liquid the biscuits will soak up. Serve hot or warm, ideally with either ice cream or whipped cream either as a dessert or for breakfast.