The Almighty Blackberry

As the summer comes to a close, I look back on all the fun times I've had with blackberries. From getting ambushed by a thug of vines retaliating for taking pounds of their precious fruit to figuring out the best ways to preserve there goodness. I love berries and they will be missed until next summer!

Here are a few things I did with the berries I picked this summer:

Freeze - To freeze berries first wash and dry them thoroughly. After you have done so spread them out evenly on a pan covered with parchment or wax paper. Place in freezer until berries are frozen all the way through. Now you can pour them into a container or vacuum seal them to keep in the freezer until you are ready to use. Frozen berries are great to snack on as is or you can make them into a smoothie, pie or cobbler.


Four trays full of berries to about 12 hours
on medium heat for my dehydrator



Left - Before, Right - After





Dehydrate - When dehydrating berries make sure to wash and dry first them place evenly on a tray. It make take several hours depending on your dehydrator.

Jam - I made about 4 batches of blackberry jam this summer. After doing so I realized seedless is by far the best. Blackberries have such large seeds that they can really get in the way or be hard to bite into. I tried straining out the seeds from half of one of the batches but it took a very long time and did not seem to make that much of a difference. I did make one batch of seedless and was very pleased with how it turned out.

To do so I poured all the berries into my juicer instead of straining them. This got out every single seed and smoothed out the pulp of the berry so much it did not really have any chunks left. I did not filter the berries any more then what the juicer did for me but it worked perfect. The left over puree we ended up pouring over some ice cream and enjoyed it just like that!

Do you want more blackberry blogs? Check out this cobbler!

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