Blackberry Slump

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There is something deeply nostalgic about blackberries for me. As a kid we never bought the berries they were always picked. They were grabbed along the sides of trails by my grandparents house in Nova Scotia and beside the dirt road that led to the cottage. We found them on hiking trips and they covered the sides of rivers we canoed down in Maine. Blackberries taste like summer vacation and freedom, and they taste a little bit like the fear of bears.

Blackberries might be my favourite berry but I feel pretty strongly that they shouldn’t be turned into anything fussy, blackberries should be rustic and simple and mostly just show off how perfect they are just on their own.

For me this blackberry slump is just the ticket. The berries are cooked until they just start to get soft and the pastry on the top both gets crisp and soaks up the juice and turns into something that tastes like home.

4 cups Blackberries

1 cup Sugar

2 tbsp Corn Starch

3/4 cup AP Flour

1/2 tsp Baking Powder

1/2 tsp Baking Soda

1/4 tsp Salt

4 tbsp Chilled Butter

3-4 tbsp Buttermilk

3 tbsp Coarse Sugar

Preheat the oven to 375F

In a 8 inch casserole dish mix the blackberries, sugar and corn starch.

In a separate bowl mix the remaining dry ingredients except the coarse sugar. Add in the butter and break it into pea sized pieces.

Carefully mix in the buttermilk adding more if necessary until the dough is quite soft. Do not over mix.

Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and with your fingers press the dough into the shape of the casserole dish.

Place the dough on top of the fruit and sprinkle the sugar on top.

Bake the slump for 45 minutes or until the sugar on top has started to caramelize, and the blackberries have started bubbling up around the edges.

Whole Wheat Pancakes with Maple Blackberry Bourbon Compote

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One of my very first kitchen memories is of making pancakes. As kids we were in charge of making our own breakfast and, while that usually meant cereal one day we decided we were grown up enough to make pancakes.

We carefully measured out each thing and and mixed it slowly and left a few bubbles in it so that it wasn’t over mixed. We poured it in little spoonfuls into the pan of bubbling butter and cooked them delicately.

We sat around the table and poured way more maple syrup than my mom would normally allow us too, and dug in. And they were terrible horrible rubbery rubbish. I know now that we forgot to add in the baking soda but at the time I just new they were wretched. They were fed to the dog so our parents wouldn’t see and we tried again.

We painstakingly measured every ingredient and fried them in butter again but this time, they cooked so quickly we almost poured the batter in, flipped them and then they were done, which was great because we were very hungry by this point.

So again, we poured much to much maple syrup on them and again excitedly tried our first bite. They, again, were god-awful-couldn’t-eat-them-terrible. The butter had burnt in the pan making them look cooked but they ran into puddles when we cut them open they were so raw inside. Again, we fed them to our dog (who miraculously had an iron clad stomach) and began to try again.

Fortunately my Dad woke up at this point and decided that enough was enough, and with surprising enthusiasm for a man who was not lying in bed reading the Sunday New York Times with a latte in his hand as was his tradition, taught us how to make pancakes.

First he showed us an old box of Aunt Jemima mix from the back of the cupboard, then he showed us to fry them in canola oil which had a higher burning temperature.

And then let us flip and fry and we brought them to him in bed with the paper.

I have moved up in the world since this disastrous first attempt, and have made many pancakes since. I gave up on mix years ago and became a devoted Joy of Baking pancake user, until I found this recipe that I posted a few months back.

But the other day when I had girlfriends over for brunch I needed a slightly moe flavourful pancake. I needed the sort of pancake that would stand up not only to maple but also to blackberries. That wouldn’t fade into the background of a syrup that had vanilla beans, and orange zest, and also the tiniest bit of bourbon. I needed a pancake with a flavour of it’s own.

These are just that, but not, as is common with whole wheat flour, stoggy, or dense, or heavy. They are wonderful light fluffy pancakes with just enough nuttiness to hold up against a wonderful summertime sauce.

Whole Wheat Pancakes with Maple Blackberry Compote.

Note: This recipe uses whole wheat pastry flour, which is basically really fine sifted whole wheat flour. If you can’t find such a thing, use half whole wheat and half white and sift it to get the bits out.

Maple Blackberry Compote

3/4 cup Maple Syrup

Zest of half an Orange cut into thin strips

Half a Vanilla Bean,

1 tsp Bourbon

1 cup Blackberries

Whole Wheat Pancakes

2 cups Whole Wheat Pastry Flour (see note)

1 tsp Baking Powder

1/2 tsp Baking Soda

1/3 cup Sugar

2 1/4 cup Buttermilk

2 Eggs

2 tbsp Butter, melted plus more for frying

A little bit of canola oil for frying

In a small pot warm the maple syrup with the orange zest and the vanilla

Let it sit on medium low heat for 10 minutes, then add in the blackberries and turn off the heat but leave it on the element.

Pancakes:

Mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl

Whisk together the eggs and the milk and pour them into the bowl, with the butter and mix until just combined, a few lumps are alright.

Fry them carefully in butter with a little bit of oil as well. When they start to get bubbles in the middle flip them over, and then keep them warm in the oven as you cook the rest. (sorry i forgot to take a picture of them!)

When they are cooked slather then with butter and syrup and berries!

Blackberry Galettes!

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Here’s the thing, I`ve always heard about blackberry bushes in Vancouver. People say they`re at the train tracks, and I`ve seen them there in the springtime with bright red berries on them in Kitsilano around the train tracks at Granville Island.

And then I had an epiphany.

There are train tracks 10 blocks away from my house that I bike past everyday.

I know, I know, I`m a little slow on the uptake.

So I`ve now gone blackberry picking 3 times this week. I am a very happy girl. I love blackberries.

A lot.

So does my beautiful friend Liz, so the other day we spent the day picking berries and wildflowers and pretending we weren`t in the middle of the city, just half a block from a major road. And then we walked back with blackberry juice dripping out of our bags and staining our shoes laughing and just generally being very content in the city that we live in.

So I`ve made many many blackberry things lately that I`ll be sharing up here, but the first thing I did was make blackberry galettes, and they were so good, and so light and so fresh tasting I thought you should get this recipe first.

It`s a little showy but mostly it`s simple, elegant and very satisfying. And, while I made them for desert, I saved one for breakfast this morning, and it was the perfect start to my day!

1 cup (2 sticks, or half a pound) of Unsalted Butter, very cold

2 cups AP Flour

1 tsp Salt

1/4 cup-1/2 cup ice water

9 tbsp Coarse sugar (if you have it, otherwise regular old white sugar will do!

2 pints Blackberries

Make the dough:

Put the salt and flour onto your counter top. Put the butter in the middle and break them up and make sure they’re all covered in flour.

Using a rolling pin roll out the butter into long strips, using a spatula or bench scraper to scrape the butter off the bottom and move in the flour from the sides.

It will look like a big mess, don’t be alarmed!

Add in the water and again, using the spatula or bench scraper, fold in the water until a dough just barely starts to form. You may need to adjust the amount of water depending on the humidity.

Once it starts to come together use your hands to fold it in half, flatten it out a bit, then fold it again, continue to do this until the dough becomes something you think you could roll out without it falling apart but not so long that the dough becomes tough.

Roll out the dough to about 1/4 inch thick and cut it into squares that ate 3 inches by 3 inches.

Fold each square in half on an angle to form a triangle. Cut 2 slits each triangle paralelle to each side leaving a space at the end so that it is connected at 2 ends. I know this sounds confusing but its really easy, just look at the pictures!

Then fold the sides over each other to form a pretty little diamond. Like this:

Chill the dough for 30 minutes in the fridge. You want the butter to be very cold so that when it goes into the hot oven it produces steam and the steam is what makes those lovely puffy little layers of dough, so the colder the better!

Preheat your oven to 375F

Egg wash the tops of the dough, and then fill the middle square with heaps of blackberries.

Sprinkle a tablespoon of sugar onto each tartlette making sure you get lots on the pastry. It will give it a wonderful crunch!

Bake them until they are a lovely golden brown on top and the berries are bursting and juicy.

And then eat and be very very happy!