Last week I took a rare break in the middle of a busy day of baking, packed my lunch into a bag and ventured into my local graveyard to make the most of the sunshine. Now, you may think it a bit of a strange place to enjoy a picnic but Mill Road cemetery is a stones throw from my house and is a veritable sanctuary away from, well, everything! It’s so beautiful and peaceful and at the moment it’s also chocablock with blackberries…
Unfortunately, on that occasion I didn’t have the time or a suitable receptacle to take any with me but a couple of days later I went on a blackberry picking mission and after pricking myself numerous times and getting well and truly scratched up (I even managed to spike myself in the head, be warned, blackerry bushes are evil buggers) I ended up with a bumper crop…
Just a couple of words of warning…beware of picking from low hanging branches 😉 and before you get baking/eating, make sure you wash them really well to get rid of all of any little friends who may be camping out in your fruit!
I recalled a recipe I’d used a couple of years ago for a blackberry and apple loaf and decided I’d scale it up a bit to make an 8 inch (20cm) cake…
You can either follow the recipe in the link above to make a loaf or use these quantities to make an 8 inch round cake…
375g self raising flour
265g butter
265g light muscovado sugar
3/4 tsp cinnamon
3 rounded tbsp demerara sugar
1 1/2 small eating apple, quartered (not cored or peeled)
3 eggs
1 1/2 oranges, finely grated zest
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
340g blackberries
and then just follow the same recipe (here) to make the most delicious apple & blackberry apple crumble cake, even the better for having picked the blackberries yourself!