A practical post about blackberries

We’re now deep in blackberry season. A couple of weeks after spotting the first ripe blackberry, the sunny spots in the village are full of them. This year they’re absolutely huge, fat and juicy, thanks to the recent heatwaves. The fact they are so early feels unsettling (I wrote about this in last week’s post, linked below), but for now I am leaning into the joy.

On Sunday afternoon my daughter and I headed out picking. Luckily the best blackberry spots are about 2 mins from our house, so we wandered up the street with a big tupperware box ready to fill. Since my daughter had already picked quite a few last week on her way home from school, I wasn’t sure how many would be ripe - but we weren’t disappointed. There were LOADS, not teeny-tiny, slightly disappointing ones either, but massive, delicious ones that were just the right level of squishy. Of course, we ate plenty as we picked.

Our plan was to make blackberry muffins for a baking competition at school, so we stopped when we had enough for those and for a good serving each with ice-cream too, but there were so many ripe ones left. I had a great conversation with my seven-year-old as we picked, about the fact that supermarkets are able to sell blackberries - and people will buy them - when they are available for free in the hedgerows. And also, the reasons why some people are not able to pick their own.

As soon as we got home we began making our muffins. The recipe we used was from The Veg Space and was super easy and perfect for kids: first we mixed 100g blackberries with a tbsp of flour to soak up the juice, and set aside. Then, in a big bowl we thoroughly combined 110g vegan butter and 200g demerara sugar - with plenty of elbow grease of course!

Next we mixed in 240g self-raising flour, 1.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda, a pinch of salt, the zest of a lemon, 260g unsweetened vegan yoghurt and 3 tbsp vegan milk. Last we (very gently) mixed in the blackberries, taking care not to squash them too much. We put the mixture in paper cake cases and baked at 190 degrees C for 25 minutes.

The resulting muffins were absolutely delicious! Not too sweet, so moist and juicy thanks to the blackberries - yum. They went to school with my daughter for the competition yesterday, and I’m happy to say they came third!

Beginning to write this post made me really crave blackberry crumble too! So, after school yesterday we went picking AGAIN with my friend and neighbour 2 doors down, and her granddaughter, who is good friends with my daughter. As often happens on a Tuesday, they came back to ours for some dinner, and with the help of the girls I made us a yummy crumble.

To make it, just put blackberries in the bottom of a dish (maybe 200-300g of them, mixed with a couple of tbsp of brown sugar). Make the crumble topping, by using your fingers to rub 60g margerine into a mix of 60g brown sugar/120g flour and a little salt. Sprinkle this on top of the berries, making sure there are no gaps, and bake in the oven (20 mins or so) until the top is going slightly brown.

It was so so good with vegan ice cream, to quote my friend ‘the best crumble I’ve ever eaten!’. I forgot to take a photo before we demolished most of it, but here’s the leftovers that we’ll be finishing off later.

Last year, in late August I made a delicious jam too, with blackberries and some of the first very early apples from my parents’ apple tree. It’s too early for apples just yet, but I’ve been feeling keen to make some blackberry jam, especially as my blackcurrant jam making plans were totally foiled by the birds! The only issue if you’re not using apples too is that you need a LOT of blackberries - this BBC food recipe suggests 1.8kg, so it very much depends on your supply. I think I may wait for the apples and hope there are still some blackberries left! Currently, the fruit in the shadier spots in our village is nowhere near ready so fingers crossed.

Blackberries make a very tasty tea, just steep a few berries in hot water. You can also make tea from the fresh bramble leaves earlier in the spring for a much more subtle taste. Both leaves and berries are said to be beneficial for stomach issues, sore throats and mouth ulcers. Apparently, you can also use the crushed up leaves on cuts to stop bleeding and encourage scabs to form.

There’s also some fascinating folklore about blackberries. When picking as a child, back when they were ripe in late summer/early autumn, I remember my mum telling me we mustn’t pick them after the start of October. After this Jack Frost would have got them and they wouldn’t taste good - which they don’t, after a frost! This parallels - and is clearly a version of - the superstition that blackberries shouldn’t be picked after Michaelmas (29th September) as the devil had spat on them!

This page I came across has lots more information about blackberry symbolism and myth, including that blackberries were sacred to the goddess Brigid (yes, she of Imbolc and the early signs of spring), and that bramble bushes were associated with the boundary between the human world and the supernatural.

If blackberries are ready near you, what are you making? I’m always on the lookout for new ideas, especially as it looks like a bumper crop this year!