foraged foods - blackberry cake

Not-so-Littl'Un loves to pick our blackberries, but I never feel I know what to do with them these days. I don't have time or energy or spoons for jam making and there aren't always enough berries for a crumble or a pie, and a blackberry fool is a VERY decadent thing!  I don't always cope with too much decadence!

My parents were coming over for supper, and I was just making a very simple pot roast chicken, so I wanted something different for pudding.

I did a bit of googling and managed to find this blackberry cake recipe from The Happy Foodie, because one of the kids won't eat cakes made with ground almonds and LOTS of summer fruits cakes use ground almonds.  That same kid later decided to announce that they don't like cake other than fruit cake (don't get me started on the difference between a cake with fruit in, and a fruit cake) so I needn't have actually hunted!!!

Anyway, it then turned out that I don't have a 23cm cake tin, let alone a springform one, but I DO have a 19cm one and a 25cm one.  I decided more is more, rather than less is more, and I thought I could have a go at scaling up the recipe.  I had more than enough extra blackberries to scale up with anyway!

The biggest thing to remember with this is not to wash the berries, this can be tricky when they are handpicked, but if you wash them, they become soggy and the cake will be too wet and not rise properly.

Here's my scaled-up version.

Ingredients:

350-400g blackberries

175g unsalted or slightly salted butter

4 medium eggs

150g caster sugar, plus a little extra for sprinkling.

2 tbs demerara sugar (or sugar crystals for coffee which is what I used, as I don't have demerara and I wasn't about to buy a bag just for 2 tbs!)

300g plain flour

1.5 rounded tsps baking powder

150ml semi-skimmed milk

Equipment:

25cm springform cake tin (min 6cm deep)

non-stick baking paper

cake mixer or electric hand whisk

Method:

1.  Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F/Gas 4). Line the cake tin with the non-stick baking paper.  If you only have greaseproof, make sure you use the dregs of the melted butter to grease the paper.  

2. Check through the blackberries for dirt or wildlife, and put to one side. Melt the butter, and set aside.

3. Put the eggs and the sugars into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a balloon whisk (not the flat beater or its equivalent) attachment and whisk until pale and fluffy; alternatively use a hand-held electric mixer.

4. Add the flour and baking powder, and mix until incorporated (I switched to the normal cake beater for this.) Pour the melted butter and milk into the mix, and whisk again.

5. Sprinkle a handful of the blackberries into the bottom of the prepared tin. Pour about half of the cake mix over the top of the blackberries. Sprinkle half of the remaining blackberries over the cake mix, then add the remaining cake mix. Finally, sprinkle the remaining blackberries over the top and sprinkle with a little caster sugar (or vanilla sugar if you have some).

6. Put the cake tin on a flat baking sheet (to catch any potential spillages) and bake in the preheated oven for about 1 hour, or until the cake is golden on top and a skewer comes out clean.  Leave to cool in the tin, before popping the spring open and transferring to a cooling rack.  

foraging is fun in summer

We've been picking blackberries! We have lots and lots of them! Mainly we eat them as is, but we've also had crumble, sponge and now we've had salad and fool too!

I roasted a chicken (from the 3 for £10 promotion in Sainsbury's) with a little butter mashed with garlic and cumin, pushed under the skin of the breast.  I just boiled some salad potatoes and steamed some broccoli to go with the chicken, but I also made a salad using a bag of mixed watercress, baby spinach and rocket, added a handful of blackberries, and made a dressing of finely chopped shallots, cider vinegar, good olive oil and a squirt of SweetFreedom.  Of course I used the stuff in the roasting tray (I had the chicken on a rack) to make a nice thin jus (or gravy, as we call it!) Glorious glorious comfort food, and the dressing and the gravy mingled to make a luscious sauce with a tang and a good hit of savoury satisfaction.

For pudding we had two different fools.  So easy to do, and no time at all take, really.  I simmered a punnet of gooseberries in a frying pan with about 60-70g of golden sugar.  When they were bubbling, I mashed them lightly with a fork until really soft, then poured into a jug and put to cool in the fridge.  I quickly washed out the pan, and put in all the blackberries we had.  It was probably slightly more than the goosegogs, but I added the same amount of sugar and did the same. 

When we were ready for pudding, I whipped up a BIG tub of double cream in my Bosch, and divided the softly mounded up cream between 2 glass bowls.  Into one I gently folded the gooseberry mush, and into the other I mixed in softly and dramatically most of the blackberry mush. (I kept some of the quickjam as there was a LOT, and it will be nice in porridge!) The blackberry fool went such a gorgeous deep colour, but I was careful to keep streaks of white and swirls of purple still separate. 

Both were a total hit, and a really luxurious way to finish off a lovely summery family comfort food meal together.