Blackberry Buckle

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Today as I write this post it is the first day of fall and by now I am fully aware the blackberry bushes are no longer heavy with berries. By September, some are starting to shrivel on the vine and most bloggers and recipe writers are digging out their best apple and pumpkin spice recipes to share rather than write about summer berries. But I’m holding on a little longer (not to summer, mind you). I’m feeling pretty done with the heat even though here in California we have to endure it for another few weeks. And don’t worry, I have quite a few delectable fall time recipes to share too but right now I want to talk about my favorite berry…the blackberry.

Blackberries remind me of when I first moved to Paradise, CA in 1979. My dad had built our family a beautiful house and I spent a lot of time hiking near the canyon. At 13 the last thing I wanted to do was leave my best friends in L.A. but there I was missing them and wishing for the grey urban sprawl and smoggy skies instead of towering pines and the brilliant blue, cloudless sky above me. So I moped around regularly in nature until one day I discovered a tangle of thorny bushes at the end of our property. It was teaming with blackberries and after tasting one I was hooked… I had a reason to love Paradise. More reasons would come later but blackberries started my appreciation for this sleepy ridge with its trees, swimming holes, and wooded trails. 

So about those tangle of bushes… they not only had beautiful plum blackberries but spiky, needle-like thorns and poison oak leaves growing sneakily throughout. It was always a precarious operation, navigating through these bushes without getting injured but I was always up for the challenge. My goal was to collect as many berries as I could without getting too cut up by the thorn-infested brambles. 

The summer heat was sweltering but I had to wear a long sleeve shirt and jeans to protect myself from getting scraped up. It was a feeble attempt because I always had battle scars from berry picking. It was also impossible to avoid the poison oak. I knew in the next few days I’d be covered in angry scratches and a relentless, itchy rash but my certain discomfort didn’t matter.

It was worth it. The only thing I cared about was picking as many juicy blackberries as I could find. I relished the challenge because the burst of tart and sweet flavor these berries promised was so delicious. My technique was to sample one for every four berries I picked. 

My obsession for blackberries and the injurious challenge involved picking them, continued even when I was supposed to be training for the cross country team. I blamed it on the season since the trails we kept running on were flanked by tempting blackberry bushes. I mean who could resist?

 My friend, Susie, and I would trot along at an easy pace (to preserve our energy of course) while the rest of the team ran ahead of us. When they finally disappeared into the distance, we veered off the path and picked and ate blackberries. We returned to the track field and our coach would look at us disapprovingly. “What took you so long?” We shrugged innocently.  “We’re still working on our endurance,” I’d say.  My coach didn’t buy it of course. The purple stains on our T-shirts, fingers, and the corners of our mouths kind of gave it away. “I think you two might need to bring some berries back for the rest of us if you’re going to be picking them!” he’d joke. Needless to say, cross-country was clearly not my sport. I was a sprinter at heart and running on trails just got me distracted…especially when training and blackberry season converged.

So that’s my story and why I am featuring blackberries this week. I decided to make a buckle to celebrate the berry’s knobby texture and bright, intense flavor. A buckle is an early American dessert that is related to crisps, cobblers, and other baked fruit desserts. The batter literally buckles around the blackberries which are scattered generously over the simple cake batter. My version is gluten-free and dairy-free and with a little tweak, it could actually be grain-free. The batter is made from sorghum, hazelnut meal, almond flour, and cassava flour but you could easily swap out the sorghum for more almond flour and you’d have a paleo-approved dessert. You could also make it gluten-free with a 1-to-1 flour blend like Cup 4 Cup of Bob’s Red Mill GF blend but you might miss the nutty, earthy sweetness of the hazelnuts. Give it a try and let me know what you think in the comments. Oh and if the blackberries are gone, try frozen organic blackberries. It’ll work great and still taste delicious. 

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Blackberry Hazelnut Buckle

Yield: 8

Author: Lizette Marx

Early American settlers didn't always have every ingredient on hand to make dessert but that never stopped them. A buckle is a variation on a cobbler. Others are crisps, crumbles, pandowdies, and all manner of baked fruit concoctions. This version is gluten-free. Try it with your favorite non-dairy milk and it can be dairy-free too if you wish. The best part though is how the juicy blackberries pair so divinely with nutty hazelnuts. Top it with toasted hazelnuts sweetened with palm sugar and zinged up with lemon zest. You won't be disappointed!

Ingredients

The Berries

• 3 cups fresh blackberries
• 2 tablespoons palm sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar

The Buckle (this is the cake part 😋)

• ½ cup sorghum flour
• ½ cup cassava flour
• ½ cup hazelnut meal
• ¼ cup almond flour
• ¾ cup organic sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon sea salt
• ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 cup milk of choice (choose whole dairy, almond or oat milk)
• 7 tablespoons butter, divided
• ⅓ cup crushed and toasted hazelnuts, or to taste
• ½ tablespoon lemon zest
• Pinch of palm sugar
• Pinch of sea salt

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF
2. Stir blackberries, 2 tablespoons palm sugar, vanilla extract, and balsamic vinegar together in a bowl. Allow berries to macerate for about 15 to 20 minutes.
3. Whisk together sorghum, cassava, hazelnut meal, and almond flour with organic sugar, baking powder, sea salt, and cinnamon in a bowl.
4. Stir milk of choice into flour mixture until batter is well combined. It will look like pancake batter.
5. Melt 6 tablespoons butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. Pour gently into the bottom of an 8x12-inch baking dish. Spoon batter over melted butter into the baking dish, using a spatula to carefully distribute batter evenly without mixing it into the butter. Leave a butter border around the sides of the dish.
6. Spoon blackberries over the batter and drizzle the juicy blackberry syrup over the top.
7. Bake buckle in the preheated oven until crisped and browned around the edges, about 1 hour.
8. Melt remaining butter in a small skillet over medium-high heat. Cook and stir hazelnut in hot butter until golden brown and toasted, 2 to 3 minutes. Sprinkle and fold in palm sugar and lemon zest. Scatter the lemony sweet toasted hazelnuts over the blackberry buckle and cool to room temperature before serving.