Noelle (my younger sister) and I have always been close. Four years younger than me, Noelle was the best thing that could have happened to my brown-eyed, curly-haired self. I had told my mom I wanted a little sister, and when she found out she was pregnant, I was confident we were having a little girl. I turned out to be right.
Unlike most sibling relationships, Noelle and I were infatuated with each other. We would stretch out on a blanket on our living room floor, half-clothed and sipping on orange juice while our grubby hands reached into the same bowl of cheerios. I understood Noelle’s incoherent sentences far before our parents did, our friends did, and so we had, for a time, a secret language. We communicated with each other before we communicated with the larger world.
And we grew up, and we traveled across the country and the world together. We talked about our fears and our hopes. We found new ways to connect as we became adults with different dreams and ambitions.
My little sister is now a nurse. She graduated just a few weeks ago, and I wish I could have been in West Virginia to congratulate her in person. She’s immensely talented and has been working in the Pediatric ICU. She’ll go to graduate school in the next year or so, and I’m confident that she’ll surpass everyone’s expectations.
Noelle and I share many things: a love for our dogs, our untiring ambition, a hesitation to attend parties with a large amount of people we don’t know. We also share a love for a bakery located just a few miles from my parent’s home. There, we both sampled their blueberry cream cheese muffins and fell in love. Growing up, Noelle and I didn’t eat cream cheese, so the obsession is definitely a new one. But take one bite of a blueberry cream cheese muffin and you can’t go back. The sweetness of the muffin is only intensified by the creamy swirls of cheese.
This blueberry cream cheese bread is just as good (if not better!) than the muffins Noelle and I love. The loaves are moist and swirled with a thick cream cheese layer. They bake to a lovely golden brown and leave your house smelling like the best part of summer. Perfect for breakfast or even for dessert, these loaves improve after sitting for a day. I wish I could send one of them to Noelle in West Virginia, but she’ll just have to look forward to eating one when she comes out to visit us in a few weeks.
Blueberry Cream Cheese Bread
FOR THE BREAD:
1/2 cups butter (1 stick, softened)
3/4 cups sugar
1/4 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 whole eggs
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/3 cups milk
2 cups blueberries
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
FOR THE FILLING:
8 ounces cream cheese (softened)
1/2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon flour
1 whole egg
1 teaspoon orange extract (optional)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease and flour one large loaf pan or four mini loaf pans. Set aside.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream softened cream cheese, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon flour, egg and orange extract. Set filling aside.
Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy (about 3-4 minutes). Add salt and vanilla extract. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour and baking powder. Fold in half of dry ingredients into butter-sugar mixture, then add milk, then the remainder of dry ingredients. Toss blueberries in tablespoon of flour and fold into batter. Your batter will be thick.
Spread half of batter into the bottom of prepared loaf pan(s). Using a spatula, spread cream cheese filling on top. Spread the remainder of batter over cream cheese and bake in preheated oven for 30-35 minutes (for mini loaf pans) or 50-55 minutes (for large loaf pan). Allow to cool in pan for at least 20 minutes before removing. Wrap leftover bread in plastic wrap and store in refrigerator.
Congratulations to Noelle, what a great accomplishment! I bet you’re both so excited to be reunited again. This beauty of a blueberry bread looks perfect for digging into over a lazy weekend morning. Thanks for sharing, Monet!
Love hearing about your relationship with your sister. Sisters are the best! My older sister is my absolute best friend. This blueberry bread sounds amazing!
Your relationship with your sister sounds so special and beautiful!
There is something magical blueberries do to any baked good.
By the way, your blog’s name is most charming I’ve run across in a very long time!
One more thing! It’s really nice to find bloggers who love to write—I often think that the food blogosphere could do with more of those! Thanks for sharing about your sister 🙂
ahhh…i always wanted a sister. another gorgeous recipe!
Fruit and cream cheese have been popping up so much all of a sudden! Tangy fruit and rich cheese–I love it. This bread sounds wonderful! 🙂
My sister would love these too! 🙂
i wish i had a sister. 🙂
i swear, blueberries have got to be the prettiest ingredient. i always love their color and the splotch they make when they burst in baked goods.
I love the bold blue pops of color!
Hi Monet,
Congratulations to Noelle!
I love reading about you and your sister, such charming and wonderful love between two sisters.
Your blueberry cream cheese bread looks amazing. We love cream cheese and these looks so good.
Thank you for sharing.
Take care! Hope you have a great weekend!
Noelle sounds like a gorgeous sister, congrats to her 😀
And this bread is a major winner, it looks brilliant!
Cheers
Choc Chip Uru
My mouth is watering just reading all about that blueberry bread. Blueberry and cream cheese is a winning combination for me!
Sister relationships really are special. I’m hoping our next baby will be a girl, just because I really want Lila to have the experience of having a sister!
This cake looks delicious!!
I love this bread! I grew up on native wild blueberries in Maine and could eat some every day. In Australia we only have those really big ones but I’m not choosy.
Congratulations to your sister. My sister will be visiting in only 18 more days! She’s in New York so she’s coming a very long way to say hello.
Oh my goodness – this looks so good. I’ve never had much luck with converting US measurements but I’m definitely going to try with this lovely loaf.
I used to beg my mom for a little sister. It never came to be. Love this bread. It looks delicious and would be perfect for breakfast on these hot summer days.
Oh Monet what a beautiful bond you and your sister Noelle share. Such a touchingly beautiful post and a matching recipe to go with it. I love cream cheese in a tea cake.
Congrats to your sister! Really that the two of you have such a great, close relationship. And this recipe looks superb! Blueberries have such wonderful flavor, and pair so well with cream cheese. Great looking bread – thanks.
Congrats to your sister, I wish her good luck with graduate school!
this seems like a wonderful recipe, I had never had blueberries until I moved to the US, so I feel I must try as many recipes for them as possible… 😉
That’s one of the best reasons I can think of for visiting you! (That, and a new baby.) Your blueberry bread looks delightful. Hope you’re having a great weekend!
Monet, what a wonderful recipe – I love blueberries and I love crem cheese and these breads look like I would love to bake and eat them! Their color is amazing because they are studded with a lot of blueberries and you can never have enough of those – fresh or baked into delicious treats!
Your sister sounds like an amazing person too – how fortunate you two are to be so close!
Hope you are feeling well and that you take really good care of yourself!
Have a wonderful Monday!
Wow, do those gooey blueberries ever look luscious! It’s always a struggle to save any fresh berries for baked goods, since they’re so easy to just eat out of hand, but this is one recipe that looks worth holding out for. 😉
Congratulations to your lil sis, Monet. I loved reading about your close relationship. I have three sisters and I can’t imagine life without them. This cream cheese bread is serious business – I have all those the ingredients at home so I think I know what I’m baking this weekend!
The fresh cheeses from Greece ( feta being the best known) have a striking affinity with bread and pastries. It must be the salt in the cheese, or the herbs which are often added. Little envelopes of thin pastry made with olive oil in place of butter are much easier to make than they look. Served warm, with a glass of rosé, you can almost say “summer at last”.
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Can I use frozen blueberries? 🙂