Tag Archives: Blackberries

Harvests and THE best Chocolate Raspberry Brownies on the Planet.

Looking on the counter I see today’s haul. A dozen or so jalepenos for hot poppers, a quart of raspberries, a handfull each of blackberries and strawberries, a couple of zucchini and a few green tomatoes for frying.

The Weatherbug calls for the possibility of rain today. I’ve known about this for a couple of days but I’m not buying into it. There have been promises of water before and here we sit not a drop. Just a few miles either north or south of us seem to get it but often it misses us. So… I am watering anyway. Not a lot, just an inch or so to soften the soil a bit. It is so hard in some spots now any rain would just run off anyway. I can almost hear a distinct ‘ahhhhh’ coming from the garden as I turn on the water.

I am putting the propagation bench (see the archives) to good use. A coworker gave me some rose cuttings last week from her miniature rose bush. I have 5 in cups on the bench. Another 5 black knight butterfly bush cuttings are also trying to root. I also have some basil that never made it to the garden growing in cups. It actually looks much better than the stuff outside. I’ve been harvesting it along. I got enough day before yesterday for a pasta salad that I love. mmm.

On to the brownies…

I picked this recipe up from the net. I made a batch with a couple of minor modifications and OMG it is THE best brownie I’ve ever had (if I do say so myself 😉 ).
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Chocolate Raspberry Squares Recipe by Robert Rothschild Farm

1/2 cup Butter, unsalted
2 oz. Chocolate, unsweetened
1/2 tsp. Instant coffee
3/4 cup Sugar
1 Egg
1 1/2 tsp. Vanilla
1/2 cup Flour
1 cup Fresh raspberries
1/2 cup Walnuts, toasted and coarsely chopped
1 Tbsp. Flour
6 Tbsp. Flour
3 Tbsp. Butter, unsalted, melted
Garnish Robert Rothschild Red Raspberry Gourmet Sauce and fresh raspberries
3 Tbsp. Cocoa powder
1 tsp. Vanilla
2 Eggs
3/4 cup Brown sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

For brownie layer: Combine 1/4 cup butter, chocolate and coffee in a small sauce pan and melt over low heat. Cook and reserve. In electric mixer bowl, add the remaining 1/4 cup butter and sugar. Beat to combine. Add the egg and vanilla and continue to beat just until incorporated. Add the melted chocolate and flour. Pour batter in a greased 9 inch square baking dish. Bake for 12 minutes.

For raspberry layer: In a small bowl, combine the fresh raspberries, walnuts and flour.

For top layer: Combine brown sugar, flour, cocoa, vanilla, eggs and melted butter in a small bowl. Reserve.
Remove brownie layer from oven and distribute the raspberries and walnuts over the top. Drizzle the top layer over raspberries. Return to oven and bake another 20-30 minutes.

To serve, spoon some Red Raspberry Gourmet Sauce on a dessert plate, place a raspberry square on top of sauce and garnish with fresh raspberries.

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When I made them I left out the coffee and raspberry sauce, substituted almonds for walnuts (didn’t have any walnuts) and probably used about 1 1/2 cups of fresh (just picked) raspberries. They turned out very moist and you could really taste the raspberries. I think they were even better the second day. This recipe is a keeper.

A Sticky Subject

The better part of yesterday afternoon was spent getting my floor so sticky that you can’t stand in any one place very long for fear of being ‘stuck’ there for good. The end result was 5 pints of blackberry pancake syrup and 6 pints of blackberry jelly.

I started out with about 15 cups of blackberry juice that was not easy task obtaining. One hint. Don’t bother trying to use an electric juicer to extract blackberry juice. What you end up with is a rather pale thick purple pulpy mess that I ended up not using. After many layers of cheese cloth and a sieve I ended up with enough juice for the projects. Next year I am probably going to invest in a steam juicer. I feel like I ended up wasting a lot of juice the way I did it.

I went with blackberry jelly over jam because of the seed issue. Most of the berries were ones I had grown this year but I did add some wild berries I had in the freezer. They are loaded with seeds, too many for my taste. I went with the jelly recipe from the pectin box but used the following recipe for the syrup.

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Blackberry Pancake Syrup

Blackberry Juice
Sugar
Lemon Juice

For each cup of blackberry juice add 2/3 cup of sugar and 1 tsp of lemon juice. Bring to a rolling boil and boil for 8-10 minutes, remove from heat. Once it settles down skim off the foam with a metal spoon if there is any and pour into hot pint jars. Seal in a boiling water bath canner for 10 minutes.

This will take a while to thicken and will seem quite thin when you remove from the canner. I’ve had it take a couple of weeks to thicken up before but if prepared properly it should thicken up fine.

I haven’t tried it but will try using raspberries with this recipe too perhaps adjusting the sugar a little as they aren’t nearly as tart as the blackberries.
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I gathered some raspberries this morning and will work up a batch of raspberry jam this afternoon. Stay tuned…