Today: berries

When am I ready for winter? When my freezer is filled with berries!

Where do I get berries from? In 6 years, I’ve never stopped going blackberry picking. I used to go raspberry and blueberry picking, too, but I have bought them from friends lately.    

Why do I love them? They’re such a joy! They’re one of my greatest summer joys, alongside water, corn, and melons. I often eat them as they are, when they are picked!

How do I use them? Better yet, how don’t I? From smoothies to gelatos, then cakes, birthday cakes, and more elaborate desserts, it seems that berries bring along a certain freshness! My favourite berry dessert? Pavlova!

I know, I know, I’ve promised 2 recipes since last week. Something occurred, though. Two days ago, I was searching for a solution dealing with some soured whipping cream... and I ended up clicking the recipes on my blog.

So, I told myself ’Why not make a list of recipes to bake/cook when we’ve got ingredients about to spoil?’

I’d like to keep it updated, by categories!

Basic ingredients

cottage cheese: papanaşi, baked papanaşi, Dobrujan pie

egg whites: Pavlova, pricomigdale, walnut cookies

milk: supangle, muhallabieh, galatopita, trileqe, condensed milk

sour cream: ashta

whipping cream: savarine, molehill cake

yoghurt: Romanian donuts, lemon pound cake

1 yolk: tart crust

several yolks: crema catalana

Fruits

apples: apple pie, apple strudel

bananas: Banoffee Pie, vegan coconut and strawberry dessert, vegan banana cookies, vegan banana and peanut butter cookies, vegan banana pound cake, banana and oatmeal cake, banana muffins

blackberries: syrup

grapes: grape pizza, grape cake

quinces: upside-down quince cake

raspberries: smoothie

rhubarb: rhubarb and strawberry cake, rhubarb sauce

Vegetables and herbs

basil: pesto

eggplant: mirza ghasemi

spinach: spanakopita

Already-processed foods

condensed milk: colchão de noiva, Deliciu

preserves: negresă (Romanian brownie)

rice cakes: chocolate cake bars

♥

April 1^st was indeed Fools’ Day! From repeated failures in the supply of power, our refrigerator broke. Dad came to help and we tried to solve things. The solution was to take the food to our terrace (it also snowed the following day).

It was tougher with the frozen berries. We stored what we could in my father’s freezer until the new refrigerator was delivered. What to do with the remaining berries? ’Syrup!’ was Marcel’s idea.

Syrup we made, our version of it! Juice the berries. Let the juice boil with the sugar on low heat for half an hour. When it cools, transfer it to bottles. You will get 10% less liquid in terms of amount.

It is a wonderful daily treat, either with still or bubbly water!

P.S. We used—

3.5 kg raspberries

3.5 kg sugar

&

1 kg blackberries

1 kg sugar

The crust

100g buckwheat flour

50g tapioca flour

a pinch of salt

50g water

1 large tbsp flax seeds

1 tbsp vinegar

50g coconut oil

25g agave syrup

The filling

150g coconut milk

200g vegan chocolate chips

2 tbsp cornstarch

200g berries (blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries)

+coconut oil and tapioca flour -> your baking pan

This recipe’s great after the Holidays. Do you know why? Because you’ve had enough of everything. And because the hard-working people surely have berries left in their freezers (some living in the Southern Hemisphere even have fresh berries!).

You can use this recipe for the tart crust.

Bake it separately, in the preheated oven, at 170°C, for 15 minutes (use baking beans if you have them).

While the tart crust is cooling, make the filling.

Mix the coconut milk, the vegan chocolate chips, and the cornstarch in a pan and place it on medium heat. Let it boil. After it cools, fill the tart crust and place the berries on top.

Savour it!

500g blackberries

500g sugar

125ml water

juice from half a (large) lemon

We went blackberry picking last Sunday; they are so flavourful! I placed some in the freezer for winter, ate some others, baked some desserts with them, and couldn’t help but make preserves out of them.

I used an old recipe of my Mum again. It goes like this (the fast version)—

Clean and wash the blackberries well.

Place them into a pan, add the sugar and squeeze the lemon. Then, add the water.

Let it immediately simmer on low heat.

When the texture is syrupy, place the pan aside (it took 45 minutes in our case).

Pour the preserves into jars. We got 1 big jar and 2 small ones.

I can’t wait to taste it in the morning!

It turned out wonderful, caramelised as much as needed!

For the filling:

300g ricotta (or urdă)

120g sugar

For the cake layers:

3 eggs

100g sugar

200g blackberries + blackberries to put on top

40g butter (at room temperature)

1 sachet vanilla sugar

280g flour

½ sachet baking powder

At first, mix the ricotta (or urda) with the sugar and let it rest in the fridge while preparing the cake batter.

Beat the eggs with the sugar until they become fluffy. Add the blended blackberries, the butter, the vanilla sugar, the flour, and the baking powder. 

Stir with a wooden spoon and pour into a round baking pan (diametre: 20cm) with a dettachable bottom. Butter and flour the upper part, pin some parchment paper to the base.

Bake for 25 minutes in the preheated oven, at 190°C, and let the actual cake cool. Marcel helped me cut it in half. I used two-thirds of the filling to sandwich the two cake layers and one third to cover the cake... and placed the extra blackberries on top.

...and I got such a nice colour... and the cake is truly blackberry-flavoured! J