How You Handle This Frozen Ingredient Will Make or Break Your Baked Goods

Published 01/23/2020

Blueberries are summer made edible, and you can continue enjoying their tangy sweetness long after the season ends. The trick? Learn how to bake with frozen berries!

Here’s the thing about baking with frozen berries: they’re actually ideal, so long as you know how to handle them. With the simple prep steps below, we’ll show you how to avoid blue-tinged batter, runny pies, soggy-bottomed desserts and the rest of the flaws associated with frozen berries. Once mastered, you can apply these rules whenever you’re craving a fresh, blueberry baked good!

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Why Bake with Frozen Blueberries

Picked during peak season, frozen berries are often more delicious than the oversize and expensive ones you find in the produce section of the grocery store outside of your local growing season. Freezing is a good way to preserve flavor and nutrients, so baking with frozen berries is a wonderful way to work antioxidants, vitamin C and fiber into your diet. While it’s true berries are delicate and won’t be as pretty after freezing, this is less important when you’re folding them into batter and baking them into a muffins or bars. In fact, berries are often baked or made into jam when they’re overripe and too soft, so there’s absolutely nothing wrong with using frozen berries for baking.

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How to Prep Frozen Blueberries

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Most recipes call for thawing berries before baking, particular if the recipe can be made with either fresh or frozen berries. This allows the ice crystals that may have formed around them to melt away. Here’s how to prep your frozen blueberries for baking.

1. Pull berries out of your freezer and place in a colander set over a bowl until they have thawed. Setting up berries this way allows you to capture the juices, in case you want to add them to a smoothie or use in another way.

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2. Gently transfer thawed blueberries to a paper towel-lined sheet pan and pat dry.

3. If desired, transfer berries to a bowl and toss with flour. Coating berries with flour helps them suspend in the batter and prevents them from all sinking to the bottom. Taking this step also keeps the berries from turning your batter blue.

frozen blueberries being tossed with flour

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How to Use Frozen Blueberries

Blueberries are excellent baked into cobblers, crumbles, bars, pies, quick breads and muffins. Need we go on? The only limit is your own imagination. That said, we do have a couple fan-favorites recipes to recommend.

Blueberry-Banana Bread
There are so many reasons to love this blueberry banana bread. It’s moist, sweet and such a treat. It delivers a double dose of fruit. Oats add a texture boost, and it’s almost always an option to make this recipe. Why? Because this loaf is made with Bisquick™, and just a few other basic ingredients. So next time you find yourself with a bunch of brown bananas, mix up a loaf of this perfect breakfast bread, and there’s no reason you can’t turn a slice into a snack or even an after-dinner treat!
Blueberry Cobbler
Make the most of summer's fresh fruit and mix up an easy Blueberry Cobbler. With a tender topping and a berry filling, this easy Blueberry Cobbler with Bisquick™ Original Pancake & Baking Mix is a dessert you'll be asked to make again and again. If you don't have fresh blueberries on hand, frozen blueberries achieve the same, great taste. For this Blueberry Cobbler recipe, just make sure the total volume of fruit remains the same if using frozen blueberries. Spoons up and enjoy.
Blueberry Cheesecake Bars
Prize-Winning Recipe 2006! Love cheesecake? Add a blueberry layer, and delight in every creamy bite of this cheesecake bar.
Banana-Blueberry Muffins
This one is for the Banana-Blueberry Muffin lovers. Ready in 30 minutes–these perfect-for-anytime muffins will not disappoint. When whipping up a batch of blueberry and banana muffins, don't overstir or overthink these simple muffins. Overstirring can cause little “mountain peaks” to form on your delightfully delicious Banana-Blueberry Muffins. Add these to your next at-home brunch menu for a surefire hit. Nothing beats muffins from scratch!
Blueberry-Pineapple Buckle
Strap on your seatbelt and get in gear for this blast-from-the-past dessert. Succulent fruit covered with a cinnamon crumb topping and brown sugar-pineapple sauce is comfort food at its best.
Blueberry Crumble Bars
Fresh blueberries on a buttery cookie base and topped with a sweet crumble will be your new go-to summer bar.

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Psst, you can also turn your berries into a sauce to drizzle over your pancakes, French toast or angel food cake!

Pouring blueberry sauce over angel food cake

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How You Handle This Frozen Ingredient Will Make or Break Your Baked Goods

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Why Bake with Frozen Blueberries

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How to Prep Frozen Blueberries

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How to Use Frozen Blueberries

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Try these

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Bake Up Something Special

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Why Bake with Frozen Blueberries

How to Prep Frozen Blueberries

How to Use Frozen Blueberries

Try these

Bake Up Something Special

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