Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Berry Picking




A few years ago my family discovered this wonderful "Pick Your Own" farm nearby, Highland Orchards. I simply adore it! Their prices are reasonable and they have the cutest store as well. The last few times we have gone, we only picked strawberries.. not because we all particularly love them, but we always end up going during the strawberry season. Therefore this year I finally kept track of when the raspberries and blueberries were in season.
I might just be a tad crazy, but I always feel that fresh, really fresh fruit just make better pies, smoothies, etc. Granted, when I take the time to go pick the berries myself, I tend to use better ingredients overall.

With the red raspberries we made a wonderful pie (from my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook). And well, with the blueberries, we made what could be the best thing I ever ate. While browsing through foodgawker (my favorite website) for blueberry recipes, I found a recipe for Maple Blueberry Crumbcake. And it's just as good as it sounds, if not better.
We had to make some substitutions though. We never keep any buttermilk on hand, because it goes bad faster than we can use it and it is so simple to make a replacement. Just fill a 1 cup liquid measuring cup with 1 tablespoon white vinegar and fill the rest with milk and wait about five minutes and it's ready to use. Also, we didn't have any maple extract on hand either. Instead we put a couple tablespoons of the maple syrup in the microwave for about 10 seconds until it was a little thinner. (I also did the same thing when I made the glaze, my maple syrup was too thick to stir into the powdered sugar.)
(not the best picture ever.. but hey, Paul McCartney liked it!)

1 comment:

  1. even though Japanese beetles flew in our ears, it was still worth it

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