Preparing blackberries for various uses

The joy of eating fresh blackberries, alone or with granola, is one of which we cannot get enough! However, we cannot eat the fresh ones completely before they spoil, so gallons have been flash frozen for later usage with whole-grain pancakes, muffins, fruit desserts, etc. I've also begun making jam. I hope to finish that up today. In the first photo, I am drying the berries before lightly mashing them to cook into jam.


I have set larger ones aside (in the small plastic container) to go with the homemade cake for individual cups of blackberry trifle that we will have with our Memorial Day meal today.



Pound cake made by The Hubster! We were both in the mood to cook something up.


I decided to throw a few frozen berries into a sparkling berry drink, to see how it worked and tasted. It looks pretty festive, and it was very tasty! I ended up adding more than this, and a few of them were quite tart.



Here, I am scooping the hot jam into jars for canning. I have a couple of more containers full to cook up, so will be busy again today. It's such a "good" busy though, and I find that I am sleeping better after all this harvesting and prepping! It is all very satisfying, and a sure sign that summer is officially upon us!

How has your summer begun?


Javamom