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| Blackberry canes. Thorns o’plenty! |
Wild Blackberry plantsweeds are nasty, with prickles on everything. No one in their right mind would try to grow them, but they’re frequently seen along public use trails. (Can you say “NIMBY?”)
The berries are tart and easily bruised. We generally eat them straight, but I’ve had success putting them in muffins.
Uber Muffins — Adapted from
The Best Recipe3 C whole wheat flour
1 T baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 C sugar, reserve 1/4 C
1 stick butter (8 T), softened
2 T oil
2 eggs
1 1/2 C plain yogurtOptional Coating:
1/2 C sugar
2 T cinnamon
2 T melted butter
- Preheat oven to 375°F. Grease a muffin tin — I like the vegetable spray stuff for this.
- Mix dry ingredients in a bowl.
- Mix wet ingredients in another bowl.
- Mix fruit with flour — see below for variations
- Combine them, stirring just enough to get out most of the wet parts. Stir in fruit last.
- Divide batter among the muffin cups and bake until golden brown. “How long?” you ask. It depends on the size of the muffin cups. Try 15 minutes, then check it every five. For medium-sized muffins, about 20-25 minutes. The baby muffins I did took about 15-20 minutes.
- Cool on wire rack for 5 minutes, remove muffins and serve warm.
- The optional dip — Cooks’ Illustrated’s idea — is to dip the top of the warm muffin in the melted butter and then the cinnamon sugar mixture. This sounds totally decadent.
Variations:
Blackberry: Sprinkle the 1/4 C sugar on 1 1/2 C blackberries. Gently stir 2 T flour around them. This helps insulate them from the batter and turning the entire muffin purple. Blueberry: Freeze 1 1/2 C blueberries before you make the muffins. Or, if they’re fresh, sprinkle the 1/4 C sugar on 1 1/2 C blueberries. Gently stir 1 T flour around them. Mocha chip: Add 1 T ground espresso to yogurt. Fold in 1 C chocolate chips into the batter.
Try cobbler (and if you ride along the Burke, it totally smells like cobbler)
1 quart blackberries
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup oats
1 cup wheat flour
1 stick of melted margarine or butter (more if you want it to stir more easily, some may even use 2 sticks)
Preheat oven to 350. Throw berries onto bottom of 13 by 9 pyrex dish. Thrown the dry ingredients into the melted butter. Mix it up. Sprinkle it over the berries. Bake for however long it takes to get your topping to golden and crisp. It’s good with vanilla nice cream.
BLACKBERRIES ARE BACK IN TOWN!!! Just picked 5 gallons yesterday. 🙂
i have to write to give my most sincere thanks to the most wonderful & tasty recipe. the summer is long gone & i cant stop thinking about these things. i am not one to bake or cook or have anything to do with the kitchen, really. i’m saying to you that these muffins were the most amazingly yummy treats i have tasted in a long time, no, make that ever! i was forced into looking for a recipe after i got a little too excited when my friend found a blackberry bush in her back yard. we all know that blackberrys are oh so tempermental and go bad whenever they feel like it so you cant let them hang around for more than a day. i made it my mission to pick every last one, & well.. that left me with tons of berrys. i found your site & was so pleased to know that the recipe was comming from the west coast. (im a bi-coastal babe & now live in new england.) i think what really put this recipe miles apart from any other muffin recipe was the use of whole wheat flour not white flour. instead of making these look & taste processed it made the snack taste hearty & healthy, but not too earthy. i found a little trick too. after you pick the berrys, rinse & soak them then lay them spead out so none of them are squishing each other on a paper towel. then keep them on a window ledge in the sun for the rest of the day & the next morning put them in your muffin mix. that extra day of ripening makes the berrys turn oh so sweet & even better than right off of the bush. everyone who tasted them said they were the best muffins they have ever tasted. they were all completly genuine in their reviews, because they all know i can spot a faker any day. i even went so far as to mail some to my family next day air when i made my second batch. (the muffins were great the first go around & the blackberry bush kept giving me blackberrys, so what the heck, right?!) sounds silly, doesnt it? well, i dont care! i would recomend the recipe to any & everyone. actually i will demand that they use it when it comes to summertime blackberrys because there is nothing better.