I got back from Penticton last week, and I’m still thinking about it, not just the lake, or the heat, or the slower pace of small-town life, but the fruit. So much fruit. It turns out late July, right in the thick of Penticton fruit season, is exactly the right time to be in the Okanagan if you care about eating well, and I did not know how spoiled I was about to be.
Penticton and the Okanagan Fruit Season
Penticton sits between two lakes (Okanagan and Skaha) in one of Canada’s few desert-like microclimates, which is exactly why the valley is such good fruit-growing country. Hot days, cool nights, and enough sun to make everything taste concentrated and a little more like itself. We’ve been making this trip for a few years now, and it’s become one of those rare vacations that actually gets better with repetition; we know which farm stands are worth the stop, and every summer we get to see how that year’s fruit compares.
The Fruit, in Order of Appearance
Cherries kicked things off, though I’d caught the tail end of the season. The stand owner warned me they were on their way out for the year, which somehow made the bag I bought taste even better; that “get them while you can” urgency baked right in.
Peaches came next, and this is where things got a little unfair for every other peach I’ve eaten in my life. Warm from the sun, so ripe they were almost bruised, and worth the sticky hands.
Blueberries were everywhere: farmers markets, roadside coolers, even a pick-your-own patch I wandered into on a whim. Okanagan blueberries in late July are about as good as fruit gets, and I ate more straight out of the container than I probably should admit.
Blackberries were the last thing I bought before leaving, and they never even made it into the fridge; we ate the whole container on the drive home, passing it back and forth at stoplights, tart and a little wild-tasting compared to the cultivated stuff.
By the end of the week I’d more or less stopped eating regular meals and started just grazing my way through the valley, and I regret nothing.
The Blueberry Muffin Recipe It Inspired
The problem with a trip like this is that it ends, and suddenly you’re back home without a farm stand on every corner. Luckily I’d had the sense to buy an extra container of blueberries before we left, so the day after I got back, I turned them into muffins, partly to hold onto the trip a little longer and partly because a blueberry the size of a marble deserves to be the star of something.
Here’s the blueberry muffin recipe I ended up with: simple, not too sweet, and built to let the fruit do the talking.
Blueberry Muffins
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups flour
- 3/4 cup white sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/3 cup vegetable oil
- 1 egg
- 1/3 cup milk
- 1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries
For Topping
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1/3 cup flour
- 1/4 cup butter cubed
- 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease muffin cups or line with muffin liners.
- Combine flour, sugar, salt and baking powder in the bowl of a stand mixer. Place vegetable oil into a 1 cup measuring cup; add the egg and add enough milk to reach the 1-cup mark. Mix this with the flour mixture.
- Fold in blueberries.
- Fill muffin cups right to the top, and sprinkle with crumb topping mixture.
For Topping
- Mix together sugar, flour, butter, and cinnamon with a fork. Sprinkle over muffins before baking.
- Bake for 20 to 25 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the toothpick comes out clean.