Not a whole lot happened this weekend. Dave and I got haircuts on Friday, we went to some friends’ wedding on Saturday (which was lovely), and we chilled out most of the day on Sunday. Actually, Dave chilled out, and I apparently went into hyper nesting mode or something. I don’t know where this came from – I got up on Sunday and made chocolate chip muffins for breakfast. Then, since I had already established a theme of healthy and nutritious eating for the day, I spent about an hour in our yard picking blackberries so I could make a cobbler. I’ve never attempted to make a cobbler before (I consider myself sort of mediocre on the whole baking thing), so I had no idea how many blackberries I needed. I think I ended up with something like half a gallon. I only needed 2-1/2 cups for the recipe. Oops. I hope blackberries freeze well, but I guess we’ll find out for ourselves in the near future.
Oh, and for the record? I didn’t even begin to make a dent in the overall blackberry population of our yard. They are everywhere. Which is sort of a mixed blessing – I love blackberries, but the bushes here grow like kudzu and will take over the whole yard if we don’t keep them trimmed back. And what with the thorns, it’s almost impossible to trim them ourselves without getting sliced to ribbons. So we actually have a landscaping service that’s supposed to come sometime in the next couple of weeks to cut them back. Which is probably why this is the first time all year that it suddenly occurred to me that, hey! Our blackberries are going to go away! I should go retrieve as many as possible and make fattening desserts with them! (Well, that, and the fact that August is really the first time of year that they’re ripe enough to eat.)
I meant to take pictures of the before and after – the huuuuge bowl of fresh blackberries that I picked, and the really pretty cobbler after it came out of the oven – but the camera was upstairs and I am lazy, so alas, I have no pretty food photos to share. Maybe next time. Meanwhile, here’s the recipe that I used for blackberry cobbler, which is awesome and super-easy (thanks Google, and bettycrocker.com).
Blackberry Cobbler
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk (I used the lactose-free kind & it still tastes great)
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted
2 1/2 cups blackberries – fresh or frozen (thawed & drained)
1 cup sugar
1. Heat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Mix flour, baking powder, salt & milk in an ungreased 8-inch square baking pan or skillet. Stir in butter until blended.
3. Mix blackberries & sugar, let stand about 20 minutes until fruit syrup forms. Spoon over batter.
4. Bake 45-55 minutes until dough rises and is golden.
5. Serve warm with cream, whipped cream or ice cream. (Again, no lactose for me, so we used cool whip, which is non-dairy. Still awesome.)
During the time that the cobbler was baking and then cooling, Dave and I watched the latest episode of “Six Feet Under”, which made me cry. A lot. Honestly, I thought of the cobbler as my reward for such an emotionally harrowing hour of television. Lordy.
Mmmmmmm blackberries. I swear, you're just doing this to make Tony and me wish we were there even more!
Are they the big fat ones like back home, or the small ones like at the store?
Oh my gosh — I think I'm four or five episodes behind, but all the new "Six Feet Under"s are waiting for me to watch soon. I'm kind of afraid. Is B's baby? Don't tell me. But tell me. I totally want to know. 🙂 That show is SO harrowing, seriously. It kicks my empathy response into overdrive or something.
Yay for cobbler — my favorite dessert… I made one a few weeks ago with peaches and plums summer that was awesome…
They’re pretty dinky compared to what I’m used to in the south. My parents used to grow HUGE blackberries in their backyard. But considering how small these guys are, they are really sweet.
I will tell you nothing. Go watch the four or five episodes you’ve missed, then come back & discuss. 🙂
I'm pretty sure blackberries will freeze well. Other berries freeze really well. I was told once that when you freeze berries you should spread them out on a tray in a single layer and freeze them that way. Then, when they're frozen, you can put them in bags and they won't be all clumped together and you can easily remove any quantity from the bag pretty easily. Which sounds like more work, but possibly worth it? I don't know. I always ate all my raspberries before they needed to be frozen. We just had one small bush.
btw, that trick of laying things out on a tray in the freezer also works for chopped veggies. i like to have a little ziploc of chopped celery in my freezer (b/c how much celery do you usually use in a recipe??) — but you have to lay them out overnight on a cookie sheet before you can ziploc them without fear of them sticking together. and then when you cook with them, they cook down and you can't even tell they were frozen — voila!
Dur. Wish I had known that before I dumped them all in a ziploc freezer bag and stuck them in the freezer. Looks like we'll have a nice blackberry glacier to defrost someday.
And T, I remember that about celery now that you say it, because Mom used to do that.