My daughter walked in the door all excited one evening last week and said the blackberries were ripening at the school that is along her walk home from the bus. This local school gets ripe berries about 2 weeks before the ones on our property, so this is always exciting to get a jump-start on the blackberry season. My two daughters took the car and a small ladder to the school after dinner that evening and picked 2 and a half quarts of ripe berries. In addition to eating them fresh and in a couple of smoothies, I just had to bake one of these:
We will be eating fresh blackberries until the end of August. Can you guess what is on my shopping list for August? Shortening -- for making pie pastry dough. I know I have linked to this recipe several times before, but it really is one of the easiest and most reliable pie crust recipes that I know. It's named "Fool-Proof Pie Pastry" for a reason. It really does come out great every time. Here's the link to the recipe. The recipe makes enough dough for 5 crusts. When I make a batch, I divide the dough into 5 parts and make 5 round patties, about 3/4-inch thick and 4 to 5 inches across. I then wrap each in plastic wrap and keep in a bag in the freezer. To use, I simply thaw a patty on the counter for about 45 minutes to an hour and then roll out. I like to sub 1 cup of whole wheat flour for 1 cup of the white flour. The whole wheat adds a nice crispness to the crust. But the all-white flour crust is also quite good -- light and flakey.
Anyway, blackberry pie is a seasonal favorite of mine, and because we have all of these wild blackberries in our area, whole blackberry pies cost me about $1 each to make. We're hoping to freeze lots of quarts of blackberries in the next few weeks, so that we can enjoy blackberry pies all winter long.
