Blackberry Season is Here!

This has been a great year for blackberries. They are bigger, juicer, and there are more of them than I have seen since moving to Naas. AJ loves blackberries. He has almost permanent stains on his little fingers. The path he walks to school every morning is dripping with berries so you can't blame him. I think there are few things better than fresh blackberries on cereal in the morning, but I can only eat so much cereal! So I've baked a blackberry pie and cake in the past couple of weeks. Both turned out really well. The cake was a fun recipe that uses a yogurt pot for measuring instead of measuring cups.  When you cut it the berries make it so pretty. It was very kid friendly. Here is a picture of the boys spreading on some cream cheese frosting to make it extra sweet.

Blackberry Cake

125ml pot of natural yogurt (or flavour or your choice)

 2 pots caster sugar

1 pot cornflour

3 pots plain flour

3 eggs

1 pot vegetable oil

10g (2 tsp) baking powder

2 tsp vanilla extract

100g blackberries (or berries of your choice) 

1) Pre-heat oven to 180 C (350F, Gas mark 4)

2) Pour the contents of the yogurt pot into a small bowl.  Rinse pot and use to measure the rest of the ingredients. (Or if you would rather use cups the yogurt pot is approx. 1/2 cup)

3) Beat eggs and sugar together with electric mixer until light and fluffy.

4) Add yogurt then oil and cornflour. 

5) Gently fold in flour and baking powder. 

6) Finally add vanilla and half of the berries.

7) Grease and lightly flour a bunt or tube cake tin. Pour in the batter. Sprinkle remaining berries over the top. 

8) Bake for 30-35 minutes. 

*We made a simple soft cream cheese frosting by combining a few oz of soft cheese, a dash of vanilla, and a few cups of icing sugar until smooth. It is delicious, but must be refrigerated.

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