Someone one here had a good recipe for blueberry crumb bars, I can't find my recipe. I just remember it was a dry crumbly mix, you used half in the bottom, a layer of 2 cups of berries mixed with sugar and cornstarch, then crumbled the remaining dry mix on top. You could mix cream cheese with sugar and add on top of the berries. I am sure there are similar recipes all over, but I used it with blackberries and it was just wonderful.

How big and tough are the seeds? If they're an issue, hard and sticking in your teeth, they're better eaten fresh and easy to spit the seeds out, or else cook them down to strainable and make a swirl in ice cream, or a sorbet, or jam (put in the fridge instead of canning unless you have tons).

If it's the kind with soft, small seeds.....PIE. Just a sprinkle of sugar (1-2 TBSP) and a lattice crust, or one of those cookie cutter half open crusts that are so popular.

When I was little, I though the blackbirds were baked in a blackberry pie, not something like a chicken pie.

i'm salivating.

You know the big, fat Oregon blackberries are my favorite.

One summer at the ranch in Oregon, I had to pick the three wild bushes up by the road. I was all scratched up in the end, but it was so worth it!

Or Ann_T's scones, with the glaze if you want something sweet, without it otherwise.

The chilean berries in the markets now are not very seedy.

I only have 12 oz. so that's 1.5 cups.

Well, that's not enough for much of a pie, but you could take the pie crust and make homemade "pop tarts", by cooking the blackberry filling first, and those are easily portable and just right for a coffee break. Glaze them if you want.

Really, though, I second writersblock, I'd make the scones. Freeze the berries first, before adding, and they won't "mush up" into the dough as much. Hey, it's nearly St. Patrick's Day, you could pass them off as "Irish Scones", LOL.

Annie

Baby pie. :)

I'm curious. Where on earth do blackberries come from at this time of year?

Chile, usually, Islay, and sometimes Mexico.

It's blueberry season in Florida right now, though.

This morning I'm kind of toying with the idea of mixing them with some apples and making a crisp.

I was wondering too where the heck they came from and how they got to MI. They were reasonably priced and looked good or I wouldn't have splurged. They are big and look juicy but I suspect they are going to be quite tart. Which is why I want to bake with them in a recipe with some sugar.

I suspect they are going to be quite tart

Try them. Sometimes they are, but I've been surprised at how sweet some of the blackberries that we've been getting recently have been.

pinkmountain, blackberries can be really good when combined with peaches in a crisp or cobbler. Frozen peaches would likely be a better bet this time of year.

I agree about blackberries and peaches--they're excellent together--but I've never used frozen peaches.

The crisp idea sounds good, but I'm just not sure about the apples. Do you have any ripe pears available? I think they'd pair better. :)

You'll have to plant a tree to offset those air miles lol

Oh, the whole thing is crazy, Islay. Florida is the second-largest state for vegetable production, but do we get anything local in the stores? No. We send all our produce to Canada and all we get for sale comes from California. Go figure.

Incidentally, I bought blackberries yesterday. They were imported from Mexico by a packer in Plant City, FL and were medium sweet.

I buy blackberries at Aldi's all the time, I just eat them straight, and they're sweet except for the red ones

Luckily I actually plant trees for a living . . . among other things I do. I very rarely buy out of season produce, this was a real splurge. That's why I think I'm now leaning towards a fruit crisp, maximum emphasis on fruit, other than just eating them fresh. Initially I was thinking about muffins that I could eat in the car on my way to work, but I need to cut that out anyway!

Ice cream! There are so many things we can't avoid buying from afar. Here, we get green beans from Kenya.....asparagus from Peru....i won't buy any of that. You should see the steam coming out of my ears when I see nomfrench garlic in the supermarket, only Spanish......and don't even try a Spanish strawberry.....vile. lol

Well, lesson learned, don't bother buying blackberries out of season. They were pretty tasteless. If I ever get a hankering for blackberries out of season again I'm going with frozen. Also, that summer torte recipe from Marian Burros needs a more juicy fruit like plums, peaches, strawberries, even ripe pears or cherries. The blackberries were too spartan. Here's a photo. It just wasn't enough flavor contrast between the cake and the berries, they didn't ooze any juice into the cake.

It looks really good, though!

that torte would be good with grapes too

Yes, on the plus side with that cake, no matter how little the fruit ads to the mix, you still have a nice cake to eat . . .