Blackberry season is upon us and we have spotted lots of lovely ripe ones in Wharfedale & Craven over the last week! The Mini-Mumblers love blackberry foraging – where is your favourite place to go picking? Join the Wharfedale & Craven Mumbler Chat Group and let us know!
Here are our favourite things to do with our haul!
Blackberry & Apple Crumble
As any of you who follow us on Instagram will know we are BIG fans of a crumble! My absolute favourite is Blackberry & Apple crumble. This is my Grandma’s recipe, you know the ones which are scrawled on a piece of paper stuck in the front of the cookbook!
Ingredients:
For the Crumble
- 300g plain flour (sieved)
- 175g caster sugar
- 200g unsalted butter at room temperature
For the filling
- 450g apples, peeled, cored and cut into pieces – we have found Granny Smith apples make the best Apple crumble!
- 100g Blackberries
- 50g brown sugar
Method
- Add the butter, caster sugar and flour together in a bowl and rub together until it resembles a bread crumb like texture.
- Put the apples and brown sugar in a pan and heat gently until the brown sugar begins to caramelise.
- Add the apples to an oven-proof dish and top with blackberries.
- Add the crumble and place in a preheated oven at 180C for 40 minutes.
- Serve with ice cream or my personal favourite LOTS of custard.
Blackberry Cheesecake
Who doesn’t love cheesecake? We use this BBC Good Food recipe a lot! It’s so simple the kids can practically do it themselves. Blackberries, Strawberries or Raspberries as a topping – totally depends what PYO we have been doing!
For the cheesecake
- 250g digestive biscuits – or hobnobs if we are doing it with strawberries!
- 100g butter, melted
- 1 vanilla pod
- 600g full-fat soft cheese
- 100g icing sugar
- 284ml pot of double cream
For the topping
- 400g punnet of Blackberries (or whatever fruit you have picked!), halved
- 25g icing sugar
Method
Can be found here
Blackberry Yoghurt Lollies
This is a recipe we kind of created ourselves, we had an excess of milk & vanilla yoghurt which needed using up so we decided to make our own lollies! This will work with any fruit you need to use up.
Ingredients:
- 50ml of semi-skimmed milk
- 100ml of vanilla yoghurt
- 100g blackberries
Method
- Take half the blackberries and blend to form a puree
- Mix the yoghurt and milk together in a bowl and add the puree and create a rippled effect.
- Mix in the whole blackberries
- Divide the mixture into lolly moulds or washed yoghurt pots and freeze.
Or you could drink straight away as smoothies if you don’t fancy a lolly!
Blackberry Jam
You will need a big old haul of blackberries for jam making!
Ingredients:
- 900 g blackberries
- 400 g sugar
- 2 tbsp. lemon juice
Method:
- Add all the ingredients to a bowl and mash the berries.
- Transfer to a pan and bring to the boil.
- Simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Remove any foam which has been created.
- Pour into a glass jar – be very careful as hot jam BURNS!
- Allow to fully cool and then refrigerate.
Blackberry Lemonade
This is a recipe I have just discovered and I am very excited to try! Plus it keeps for up to a week!
Ingredients:
2 lemons, cut into quarters, pips removed
150g blackberries
few mint leaves
50g icing sugar
fizzy water or prosecco for the adults, to serve
Method
Can be found here
And finally, some ‘good to knows’ about blackberry picking!
- It’s hard to go wrong when picking blackberries, as the closest thing to a look-alike it has are black raspberries. So you can breathe.
- Although it’s always recommended to wash wild fruit before you eat it, it’s really important to do this when they are lining roads (where there is more pollution) or lining farmers fields (who could be using insecticides). Wash them just before you need them.
- Blackberries don’t ripen after they are picked, so there’s no point in picking any green ones. Go for the ones that you want to eat now!
Blackberry season is upon us and we have spotted lots of lovely ripe ones in Wharfedale & Craven over the last week! The Mini-Mumblers love blackberry foraging – where is your favourite place to go picking? Join the Wharfedale & Craven Mumbler Chat Group and let us know!
