Rosie's Seasonal Stars Brilliant Brambles

Contributing editor Rosie Birkett makes a sensational dessert with plump blackberries to savour autumnal flavours at their best

Blackberries are criminally underrated in my humble opinion. While strawberries, raspberries and cherries hog the limelight all summer long, the early autumnal berries seem to have less of a fanfare surrounding them. But when the brambles start to burst with deep purple, lip-staining, mouth-puckering fruits, we should feel excited as home cooks, because there are so many delicious ways to use them.

Whether you have the surroundings conducive to what I like to call a ‘bramble ramble’: going for a bit of a forage in the hedgerow, or can simply pick up some punnets from the greengrocer, blackberries in the height of season are cause for celebration, with their natural balance of acidity and sweetness, soft, juicy texture and beautiful colour. I live on the edge of a marshland nature reserve and am lucky enough to find myself in the midst of plentiful blackberry foraging at the end of summer, though I’m often too impatient and end up picking and tasting wild blackberries when they are still far from ripe enough to enjoy (when will I learn?).

I love the concentrated flavour of the wild blackberries, but they’re often rather small and a bit furrier than cultivated versions, and I tend to use them in bakes and compotes.

Blackberries work brilliantly in both sweet and savoury dishes and can be frozen, made into jams or quick pickles (see recipe, overleaf) or compotes to preserve them. In my beautiful little pavlovas (p54),

I’ve paired them with chocolate meringue and combined whole berries with a bay-infused compote that spills its inky juices in a rather artistic way over the swirling chocolate meringues.