Blackberries

I realize that blackberries have been gone for a while, but as I was submitting pictures of a cake made with foraged blackberries to Urban Land Scouts, I fell into some great reminiscing. The cake that I made was a conglomeration of ideas: the actual cake part was the vanilla cake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, the icing was the lime "buttercream" from the same book, and the filling (as well as the coulis) was improvised by me, with Matt's help. Blackberries and lime seemed like a good combination, and I scraped a vanilla bean into the cake better for a more intense flavor. If you have never macerated berries, I highly recommend it. You can just let them sit in sugar for an hour or so, until they release their juices; or you can make the berries very happy by soaking them in booze (and also sugar). I soaked the blackberries in brandy, and used the resulting deliciousness as the filling for the cake. I also cooked down some berries with brandy and sugar for a coulis, which made me feel very fancy. Here are some pictures of the process. I'll go and quietly remember the blackberries and think of more season-appropriate posts. Until later.