A lovely summer berry cake with the nicest of them, blackberries. Whether you buy cultivated blackberries or go pick brambles, this recipe makes the best use of them.
This berry is black
Blackberry is possibly my favourite berry which also I always forget about, getting excited about strawberries at the start of the season. But then I see them ready to pick at a Pick Your Own farm and quickly remember how gorgeous they are, benevolent weather permitting.
Blackberries are not everyone’s favourite though because of the pips. The maniacs who buy seedless raspberry jam will dismiss blackberries offhand. And the loss will be theirs: those berries are in the top three types of fruit with the highest fibre content.
Blackberries vs strawberries
The only nutrient that strawberry trumps blackberry at is vitamin C. All the other vitamins and nutrients, including said fibre, swing the balance towards blackberry. It also has marginally fewer calories per 100 g, lower glycaemic index and a little less sugar. Go blackberry!
They also win the battle with blueberries, even though the latter are a proclaimed superfood. More vitamins K, E and C, all kinds of minerals and even protein. Which one is a superfood now?
Blackberry vs bramble
And there is another, huge advantage that those black berries have over any other fruit: they are free to forage and pick. Wild blackberries, aka brambles in the UK, grow in hedges practically everywhere. If the summer is clement, which means a reasonable amount of rain and plenty of sunshine, they will be bursting with juices and as sweet as the cultivated ones.
Perhaps refrain from picking them from the side of the busy roads as they will have absorbed pollutants from traffic. But quiet country lanes and field hedges are perfectly safe. Just wash them thoroughly before eating.
And both farmed blackberries and brambles are simply gorgeous in jams, jellies, crumbles and cakes.
How to make blackberry crumble cake base
This is a particularly fabulous recipe, found in Ottolenghi’s Comfort cookbook. Quite a simple buttery sponge with berries folded in is topped with more berries and a delicious crumble finish.
The sponge is easiest made with the help of a standing or a handheld mixer, to cream the butter with sugar. But you can beat it with a wooden spoon just as well, as long as the butter is very soft.
Into that mixture eggs are beaten in gradually, and they invariably make the mixture curdle.
But after the flour goes in, the batter will become smooth again.
About two thirds of the blackberries should be folded into the batter which will now be transferred into an ovenproof gratin or flan dish, or a round cake tin 23 cm (or 9 inches) in diameter.
How to make the crumble topping
This is by far the best crumble recipe and it has now replaced all the other ones in my crumble repertoire.
With demerara sugar for the extra crunch, ground ginger and cinnamon for the fragrance, mixed with melted butter (because all those people who tell you to rub cold butter into flour for a crumble topping are wasting your time), and with flaked almonds which you can bump up, cut down on or skip altogether.
The cake will bake for up to forty-five minutes, until it passes a skewer test.
It makes a delicious pudding served warm, with cream or vanilla ice cream, but it’s just as gorgeous cold served with coffee or tea, even over the following couple of days.
Variations
Blackberries are my favourites but this is an excellent recipe to try with all kinds of fruit, not only berries.
Strawberries will be best smaller or halved. Raspberries are a straight swap, as are blueberries. And although I’ve not tried yet, I am positive chunks of apricot or peach will make a lovely cake, as will pitted cherries.
And obviously instead of shop-bought blackberries go raid the hedges and make it a bramble crumble cake – which sounds better anyway.
You can also make a variation of this cake spreading a layer of lemon curd over the sponge batter and top it with the crumble. In that case you might want to replace the almond flakes in the crumble with poppy seeds.
And jam instead of berries can be used too, similarly spread over the sponge, in which case perhaps cut down the sugar in the sponge recipe to 60 g.
More berry cake recipes
Strawberry soured cream coffee cake with crunchy streusel topping has a strawberry layer running through delicious sponge, and it’s as easy to make as it is to eat. Nigella Lawson’s recipe is a winner as usual, suitable to serve slightly warm for pudding as well as cold with a cup of tea or coffee.
Blueberry, almond and lemon loaf cake by Ottolenghi with the sugar amount cut down a little by CuisineFiend. It’s still a masterpiece of a cake – all credit to Ottolenghi.
Raspberry sponge cake recipe, with fresh raspberries scattered on top of light and airy cake batter. Dusted with icing sugar for a perfect summer dessert, with a cup of coffee or for a pudding.
More crumble recipes
Apple crumble is the easiest and nicest autumn dessert, put together in a few minutes and baked in half an hour. Apples and rum-steeped raisins covered with oat and cinnamon crumble are the perfect weekend afternoon treat.
Soft and rich brioche base with plum and cinnamon crumble topping. It means brioche is not just for breakfast. It means turning bread into cake!
We call it bramble crumble, you might know it as blackberry crisp. It’s a delicious dessert, put together in minutes, divine with a scoop of ice cream. Brambles, wild blackberries grow everywhere in the UK and in a good summer they are juicy, sweet and free to foragers.