This year's wild blackberries recipe

I love the end of summer. I don't love that the summer is ending but I wished that the end of summer time would last forever. Just as I wished that mornings would last the whole day. Weird metaphysical wishes, I know.

Anyway, blackberries are everywhere and this year in particular I've been finding the biggest and juiciest ones. They're great on their own or with some other summer fruits like peaches and raspberries, which is normally what I have for breakfast, sprinkled with flax meal or drizzled with this.

Today I chose something more substancial and had them folded in a Dutch baby pancake. Hmmm pancake, yum... but what exactly is a Dutch baby pancake?, you might ask. First of all it has nothing to do with the Dutch or their little Poffertjes. According to Wikipedia, although German inspired this kind of pancake was baptised as Dutch baby pancake in a restaurant in Seattle, Washington (deutsch, dutch, honest mistake, I'm from Europe and had this confrontation in my mind at least once or twice). I had an English grandmother so I grew up eating Yorkshire pudding and to me a Dutch baby pancake is like a sweet version of a Yorkshire pudding baked in a cast iron skillet. To put it simply: it's a puffed crepe. 

For the recipe, I turned to one of my favourite books of all time, Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life and made a few adaptations to her Dutch baby pancake recipe, switching all-purpose flour to a blend of rice flour and tapioca starch, using coconut oil instead of butter (next time I'll try it with ghee!) and replacing half-and-half for almond milk, and thus turning the recipe gluten and lactose free. Nothing against the original ingredients, so please feel free to use them in the same quantities stated in the recipe if you prefer.

Dutch baby pancake with sautéed wild blackberries

For the pancake:
1 tbsp coconut oil
2 eggs, organic preferably
3 tbsp rice flour
1 tbsp tapioca starch
1/4 cup almond milk
Pinch of salt

For the blackberries:
1/2 tsp coconut oil
1/4 cup blackberries
1 tsp maple syrup
1 squeeze of lemon juice

To serve (optional):
a sprinkle of dessicated coconut flakes

Preheat the oven to 220ºC. Put the coconut oil in a cast iron skillet and place it in the oven to melt. In a hand-blender beaker put the eggs, flour, starch, milk and salt. Blend well and pour into the warmed skillet. Place the skillet in the oven and bake for 18-20 minutes. The mixture will rise and puff, mostly in the edges. In the meantime, heat the coconut oil in a small pan. Add the blackberries, maple and lemon juice and sautée for a few minutes until warm. When the pancake is ready remove it from the oven and pour the sautéed fruit on top of it. Sprinkle with the coconut flakes and serve immediatly.

Makes 1

A recipe for your Easter

I've been so inspired by the work of the chef and artist Lori A. Stern, specially her flower pressed shortbread cookies that I've decided to make my own raw plant-based version.

Now, before you give up on reading because you think this needs days of dehydrating let me tell you that it doesn't, you don't even need a dehydrator. You do need to go on a walk to pick up the flowers, which might be the thing that'll take more time because these biscuits are just as quick and easy to make as they are to eat - which could be a problem.  

For flavourings I'm using vanilla extract and cardamom. If you can't find vanilla extract in Lisbon (I only find "the real thing" at the gourmet store in El Corte Inglês) use the inside of vanilla pods. Then use the pods to make your own vanilla extract by putting then in a jar with a good quality vodka and leaving them infuse for a few months.

Flower Pressed Biscuits

3/4 cup of almond meal
1/2 cup coconut flour
3 tbsp coconut oil, melted
1 1/2 tbsp agave
1/8 tsp fine salt
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
2 cardammom pods (only the inside seeds, crushed - although I didn't bother to crush mine...)
Your choice of flowers, petals or herbs

Process everything in a food processor until well mixed. Scrape the sides if needed. Place the dough on top of a sheet of baking paper, place another sheet on top of the dough and spread the dough with a rolling pin until you reach the desired thickness - which would be 5-7mm. Remove the top paper sheet, spread the flowers, place the paper carefully again on top of everything and press with the rolling pin. Remove the top paper and cut the biscuits with a 4cm cookie cutter. Spread them on a tray and freeze them. Store them in a container in the freezer or fridge.

Makes 20

I like to eat these biscuits straight from the freezer - because they'll have a better snap -  with an espresso or warm tea after lunch or mid afternoon.

Making the most of wild blackberries

It was late September and all the wild blackberries had already dried out on their bushes. "Next year", I said to myself, "I need to pick them earlier".

So this year, on a cloudy August afternoon, I decided to go and check on the wild blackberry bushes that are abundant near Serra da Arrábida. It was just at the right moment. Some of them were already dried but my mother and me still managed to pick a lot of plump, shiny and sweet wild blackberries.

As I drove back home I couldn't stop thinking about a berry pound cake recipe I had tried from the wonderful book A Homemade Life - one of my favourite cookbooks ever - by Molly Wizenberg, the creator of one of my longtime favourite blogs, Orangette.

For this recipe I've followed her advice on using blackberries instead of blueberries and raspberries, and did the suggested correction of flavourings, adding lemon and orange zest to the recipe. I've also opted for coconut sugar, with the correspondent adjustment of quantity, since coconut sugar is much sweeter than the regular one.

Wild Blackberry Pound Cake

2 cups + 2 tbsp flour, preferably spelt
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/3 cups coconut sugar
5 eggs
250g unsalted butter, diced and at room temperature
1 tsp lemon zest
1 tsp orange zest
2 cups blackberries

Start by pre-heating the oven to 180ºC and placing your oven rack in the middle position. Grease and flour a bundt pan (I used a silicone one). In a bowl whisk 2 cups of flour, baking powder and salt. In a food processor blend sugar with eggs for about 1 minute. Then add the the diced butter,lemon and orange zest and blend again, not forgetting to scrape the sides of the bowl. Add the dry ingredients and process until just combined. In a large bowl toss the blackberries with the 2 tbsp of flour. Pour the batter over the berries and gently fold to combine. Pour the batter into the pan and spread it evenly on the top. Bake for 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let it cool at least 20 minutes before serving.