Certain foods seem to go with warm weather.
There’s no better way to get infested with ticks and chiggers than picking wild blackberries. Stained fingers, sticky palms, and scratched ankles and arms are another side effect of berry pickin’.
So instead of scavenging for the elusive fruit in the 90 degree heat, I now leave the picking to others. I do the baking. (You become wiser, or, at least, craftier as you get older.)
Robin pointing out the wild berries growing along our pond bank. Robin was born during blackberry season. I picked and froze a few dozen pints of the wild fruit before heading to the hospital.
Blackberry Cobbler is one of the simplest of desserts and agreeable to many variations. This recipe fits a 9″ baking dish nicely.
For a 9″ x 13″ cobbler, I increase the ingredients half again and use either a single crust or a lattice work topping as shown below.
Blackberry Cobbler
Ingredients:
- 5 cups fresh blackberries
- 1/2 to 3/4 sugar
- 1 Tbs. cornstarch
- 1/8 tsp. salt
- 1/2 tsp. lemon zest (optional)
- 2 Tbs. butter
- Pastry for top of one 9-inch pie
- 1 Tbs. milk
- 1 Tbs. sugar
Instructions:
- Place blackberries in a 9-inch square baking dish. Combine sugar, cornstarch, salt, and lemon zest, mixing well. Sprinkle over blackberries. Dot with butter.
- Roll pastry out on a a lightly floured surface to a 9-inch square. Place pastry on top of blackberries; trim edges and seal. Make several slits in top to allow steam to escape. Brush with milk; sprinkle with 1 Tbs. sugar.
- Bake at 425 degrees for 30 minutes. Serves 6.
Blackberry cobblers ready for the oven.
A lattice work topping is always fun to create.
Ahh . . . pastry perfection!
This variation is a Pear Blackberry Cobbler, that works well when your family has nibbled away too many of your blackberries.
We have lots of wild blackberries and black raspberries here in Marshall MO. Used to have a great patch of
red raspberries. But my teeth and gut do not like the hard seeds. And, my kids and grandkids fuss about the seeds. Such wimps we are! So I am, at this moment, making blackberry and raspberry juice which I will freeze and make jelly with later in the fall. I will also make some blackberry/raspberry syrup, using cornstarch mixed in the the sugar. This is good over ice cream, pancakes or in any other imaginative way.
What a fun time of year! Oh, by the way, my husband is the picker, so he fights the ticks, chiggers and poison ivy growing within the large patch. He showers as soon as he comes in from berry picking and I wash his clothes immediately. So far, so good.
It sounds like you’ve got the blackberry pickin’/preserving under control. Most of the watermelons now have tiny, tiny seeds. I did better when they had the big, black ones. They’re much easier to dodge and just flick out of the melon.