You just never know, do you?

When looking for a good recipe for something to go along nicely for breakfast with my Lady Gray tea, I stumbled upon boy bait.

And I must admit I had never heard of!  Boy bait?!  I absolutely love the name and now I know I must bake a pan of this crazily-named cake.

According to tradition, the year is 1954 and a 15 year old girl entered a Pillsbury Bake-Off competition.  She submitted a blueberry coffee cake recipe, which took second place in her age division. When asked about the name of her creation, she said that teen-aged boys found her coffee cake habit forming, so she named it boy bait.

Update April Fool’s Day 2016:  from this source comes the recipe and more of the story behind boy bait:

http://www.barefootkitchenwitch.com/the_barefoot_kitchen_witc/2009/07/blueberry-boybait.html

I found it in Christopher Kimball’s The Yellow Farmhouse Cookbook, which I seem to be turning to a lot lately. I’ve used a couple jam recipes now, and I figured there would be a tempting blueberry (non-jam) recipe somewhere in the pages as well.

Blueberry Boy-Bait does not disappoint. Not only is the cake good, but so is the little story behind the name. Mr. Kimball writes:

“This is my all-time favorite recipe name. It comes from Renny Powell, a teenager from Chicago, who submitted this recipe in 1954 to the Pillsbury $100,000 Recipe & Baking Contest (now known as the Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest) and won second prize in the junior division. This is a very light one-layer cake with blueberries and a simple crumble topping. Ms. Powell evidently found it useful in attracting members of the opposite sex and, based on my testing, I would have to agree that it’s pretty good bait. I made a few changes from the original, including reducing the sugar level (recipes from the 1950s are usually too sweet), cutting back on the amount of topping, and increasing the volume of blueberries. We now use this recipe at the farmhouse, so that when neighbors stop by for a cup of coffee we have something to serve with it.”

Isn’t that delightful? You really have to make it now, don’t you?

Okay, here’s the recipe:

2 cups flour

1 1/4 cups sugar

10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) cold butter

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

2 eggs, separated

1 cup milk

1 1/2 cups fresh blueberries, washed, drained, and blotted with paper towels (or frozen blueberries that have been thoroughly thawed and drained)

You can also Google boy bait pudding recipes and find many on the web.  Or, you can watch this Youtube video and be inspired.

Be careful, though, you might be swarmed by boys!