This morning, as I was waking up, I heard on Maine Public Radio that today is Maine’s birthday. We are 190 years old! If I hadn’t made an apple pie yesterday in honor of Pi day, then I would make a cake in honor of Maine’s birthday. And what kind of cake? Blueberry, I think. What could be more appropriate? I would use Marjorie Standish’s recipe, a blueberry cake that is so moist and tender that I think I can be pardoned for using the cliché “it melts in your mouth.” And, in fact, the recipe is called Melt-in-Your-Mouth Blueberry Cake.  

Marjorie Standish, who died in 1998, has been dubbed by Down East Magazine as “the First Lady of Maine Cooking.” For many years, she wrote a column for the Maine Sunday Telegram, and she also taught at cooking schools. Standish wrote cookbooks as well, and her Cooking Down East sits on my bookshelf. Standish was what we Mainers call “a plain cook.” Along with the delectable blueberry cake, there are recipes that include cream of mushroom soup, canned gravy, and canned mushrooms. Never mind. Her blueberry cake is so good that it makes up for the recipes using canned ingredients, and there are plenty of other recipes that are made entirely from scratch. 

In flipping through Cooking Down East, I came across her Perfect Blueberry Muffins. I have wild Maine blueberries in my freezer. Maybe I’ll make blueberry muffins to celebrate Maine’s birthday. Not quite as good as the cake, but to have both cake and pie in the house at the same time seems a bit excessive, especially when you consider we won’t be having guests until the weekend, which means it will be just me and my husband, Clif, to eat the cake and pie. 

So blueberry muffins it shall be. And Happy Birthday, Maine.