Wild Berries | Enriched Children

It's blackberry season and we are blessed to have oodles in our backyard so this has become my boys favourite thing to do. Today's blog is all about picking berries and topping it all off with homemade muffins!

Despite all the berries we have in our backyard, I wanted to pick enough to bake with them.  So we headed out with our buckets to a nearby trail and got to blackberry picking!  Other than the odd prickle here and there, I found this to be such a relaxing afternoon with my boys.  Something about the quiet and being patient as we slowly filled our ice cream buckets was so therapeutic.

This turned out to be a lovely afternoon together and gave me so many opportunities to chat with my boys!

The next morning I pulled myself out of bed as my boys woke up and we baked blackberry muffins together.  Let me tell you, there is nothing like baking and enjoying fresh homemade muffins together.

Baking is one of the best ways to connect and probably the ultimate educational activity you can do at home.  Baking involves math, science, social skills...I could go on- not to mention how much we all had to work together.

And by the end, we had made a delicious breakfast!  Below is the recipe I used and it's delicious!  (From Simply Recipies). It does call for sour cream which I didn't have so I added some extra milk instead.  (All ingredients can easily be substituted based on allergies or preferences!)

• 2 1/2 cups (320g) all purpose flour
• 1 Tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup (236ml) sour cream
• 1 teaspoon milk
• 1 cup (200 g) sugar
• 8 Tbsp warm melted butter (1 stick, 112 g)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups (about 5-6 oz, about 150g) of blackberries, fresh or frozen (if using fresh berries, cut them in half, if using frozen berries, defrost first, drain excess liquid, then coat them lightly in flour)

METHOD

1 Preheat oven, prepare muffin pan: Position rack in center of oven. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C). Grease a standard 12 muffin pan or line with paper muffin cups. (Actually, with the berries you'll have more batter than just for 12 muffins. This batch made 18 muffins.)

2 Combine dry ingredients: Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in a large bowl.

3 Combine wet ingredients and sugar: In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, sour cream, milk, sugar, butter and vanilla.

4 Add wet ingredients to dry, then add berries: Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture, and mix together with a few light strokes, just until the dry ingredients are moistened.

Add the berries. (If you are using frozen berries, defrost them first, then drain the excess liquid, then coat them lightly in flour.)

Do not over-mix! Over-mixing will cause the muffins to be dense, not fluffy. The batter should not be smooth, but rather lumpy.

5 Put into muffin cups and bake: Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until a toothpick inserted into the middle of 1 or 2 of the muffins comes out clean, 17-20 minutes (or longer).

6: Let cool: Let cool for 2 to 3 minutes before removing from the pan. If not serving hot, let cool on a rack.

Serve as soon as possible, preferably within a few hours of baking.

Some items you may need:

• mixing bowls
• silicone spatula