What to do with blackberries...
Categories: cooking-gluten-free
Tags: baking, recipes, gluten free, Blackberries
Date: 05 October 2009 15:03:04
Last week my parents' freezer packed up (it's a new one, but let's not get into that). They managed to get some of their frozen stuff into the freezer of some friends of theirs but when they were visiting at the weekend they brought a lot of the stuff with them for us to use up.. Mostly defrosted blackberries, spinach, raspberries, redcurrants and gooseberry puree.
It turned out that we had friends coming for dinner that night so we firstly made a blackberry and apple crumble (yum). Our first crumble of autumn and the apple season (my parents also brought some bramleys from their tree) which was great - and given the strong wind and horizontal rain we had been having in the early evening it was quite fitting really. Hubby has made a batch of blackberry ice cream which is just heavenly! He also has mixed up a batch ready for the ice cream maker of raspberry and redcurrant as well as gooseberry. In spite of the fact that I also made a batch of (extremely tasty) blackberry muffins (see below - gluten free, of course!), we still have a LOT of defrosted blackberries.
Blackberry muffins:
I looked around on the internet and found this recipe
and adapted it to be as follows (making it gluten free and in measures that are easier to follow):
INGREDIENTS
290g Doves Farm gluten free plain flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
200g half fat creme fraiche
20g milk (about a tablespoon
160g sugar
115 g warm melted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
12 oz of defrosted frozen blackberries, drained
METHOD
1 Position rack in center of oven. Preheat oven to 400°F. Grease a standard 12 muffin pan or line with paper muffin cups. (Actually, with the berries you'll have more batter than just for 12 muffins. This batch made 18 muffins.)
2 Whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.
3 In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, sour cream, milk, sugar, butter and vanilla.
4 Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and mix together with a few light strokes, just until the dry ingredients are moistened. Add the berries. (If you are using frozen berries, defrost them first, then drain the excess liquid, then coat them lightly in flour.) Do not overmix! Overmixing will cause the muffins to be dense, not fluffy. The batter should not be smooth.
5 Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the middle of 1 or 2 of the muffins comes out clean, 17-20 minutes (or longer). Let cool for 2 to 3 minutes before removing from the pan. If not serving hot, let cool on a rack.
Serve as soon as possible, preferably within a few hours of baking.