Blackberry Picking and Blackberry Cooking

It is typical in Wales, that in September when the kids go back to school, after a summer of rain, that the weather will be beautiful. Yesterday was a lovely sunny day, and David had the day off work, so we all went black berry picking. This is the time of year that the blackberries start to ripen, and we were lucky enough to find some really plump ones, just about to fall from their branches.

It is also typical in Wales, after picking blackberries, to make a blackberry tart, and this was something I delighted in as a child. I and my friends would roam around the neighbourhood like lost boys collecting tubs full of blackberries, then we would take them home, our fingers purple with their juices and our mothers would make blackberry tarts. My mother's fore has never been cooking, and she would roll out two sheets of pastry, throw some berries in the middle and call it a blackberry pie. It was always sour and full of pips and hard bits... But I loved it, and with a lashing of evaporated or 'ideal' milk, Mammy's blackberry tart always went down a treat. 

I am no longer a child however, and since I have a child of my own now, I wanted to be the blackberry-baker. 

Before doing anything with your blackberries you should always give them a nice long soak (at least 1-2 hours) in cold water, salt an sugar, to bring out and kill any bugs. 

I decided to go down the less traditional route and I made a Blackberry cheesecake and some little blackberry tartlets. Yum! 

My cheesecake didn't turn out just as I'd hoped, I adapted recipe I found online for strawberry cheesecake (Google simple cheesecake recipe) and I didn't use a scale to weight my ingredients so the consistency was a bit off on the biscuit base, and the cream-cheese filling.

Here is the finished product! 

My tartlets however turned out great! I used short crust pastry, baked in the oven until golden brown and hard, and filled it with a blackberry filling made by melting butter in a pan, adding blackberries, flour and icing sugar, then I topped them with blackberries and icing sugar. 

The perfect way to end summer and welcome winter!