Raspberries | Adirondack Lifestyle

Adirondack Wild Berry Maple Crisp

Adirondack Lifestyle Recipe Included

Adirondack Wild Berry Maple Crisp mit Sahne.
Oh baby.

It has been a great summer for people spending time in the Adirondacks who also happen to love wild berries. And for those in that cohort who also work hard to eat locally grown food, this berry season is a super deluxe bonanza. For reasons a botanist can explain, the Adirondack region is enjoying an extremely productive wild berry season. The red raspberries started it off a few weeks ago, and these luscious red beauties have now been joined by their darker hued cousins; the wild black berry.

Rubus fruticosus

The health benefits incurred from eating berries is well documented. Fresh berries are some of the most powerful disease-fighting foods available. Consumption of fresh berries has been associated with a lower risk of certain cancers, improved memory function, and healthy aging. However, although therapeutic, no one with a taste bud could ever confuse fresh berries with medicine. There is nothing as lovely to eat as a sun-warmed, sweet, juicy berry picked at peak ripeness. Preferably consumed the moment it is plucked.

A true berry lover can never get enough, so, what to do but pick and bake?!

Follow along for instructions on how to make Adirondack Wild Berry Maple Crisp.

Adirondack Wild Blackberries & Raspberries

Pick through the wild berries to remove any crud that might have fallen in the berry bucket during your fight through the bramble, er, your fun berry picking expedition.

Adirondack Wild Berry Maple Crisp

I bake gluten-free, but this recipe can easily be made with regular flour. If you use flour, use whole wheat flour. Do it for me.

You can also substitute regular berries from the market if you don’t have access to wild ones. But if you buy berries you’ll miss all the fun of insects bites and prickles on your arms and legs because you’re wearing shorts and a tank top due to the humidity and scorching heat. Don’t forget, it could be all the effort that makes the wild berries sweeter.* See my footnotes at end of this post.

I also have a thing for Adirondack maple syrup so I use maple sugar and maple syrup instead of sugar. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but why wouldn’t you want to?

Maple sugar from my friends and neighbors at South Meadow Farms.

Here we go….

2.5 cups Wild Raspberries, Blackberries or a combination of both, or Berries from the market
1 heaping tablespoon of Corn Starch
½ cup Maple Sugar
1/8 cup Maple Syrup
1 teaspoon Vanilla

Gently mix together the berries, corn starch, maple sugar, maple syrup and vanilla in a bowl. Set this aside.

½ cup Gluten Free Oatmeal
½ cup Almond Meal
¼ cup Coconut Flour**
1/3 cup Chopped Walnuts
½ cup Maple Sugar
1/8 cup Maple Syrup
Dash-o-salt
½ teaspoon Cinnamon
6 tablespoons of Cold Butter

Mix together the oats, almond meal, coconut flour, walnuts, maple sugar, salt, cinnamon, and the maple syrup. Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter until you get a nice crumbly mix.

Pour the berry mixture into a small, shallow baking dish. I like to use a glass pie pan. Sprinkle on the crumb mixture trying not to be too fussy about lumps. Lumps are fine.

Bake for about 25-30 minutes in a 350-degree, preheated oven, or until the top is golden brown and the berry juices are bubbling and a delicious fragrance with a sweet berry top note and maple cinnamon undertones has permeated your home. The smell alone is delightful.

Remove from the oven and let the crisp rest for about 10 minutes.

Spoon out a serving of still warm crisp.

Quickly, spoon on some freshly whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Notice how said cream melts into the nooks and crannies of the warm crisp, blending until it becomes one with the crisp.

Take a bite. Enjoy a moment of nirvana.

Footnotes
* Actually, I’ve always thought wild berries are sweeter because they are smaller and in the spirit of bio mimicry, wild berries are just like humans where smaller=sweeter.

** Be careful cooking with coconut flour; it is dense and dry, and sucks up more liquid than a teleskier at Alta on a spring day. I worked in a ski reference – yay!

The Case of the Missing Strawberries

Adirondack Wild Strawberry Spring 2012

Last spring, I didn’t mention the huge crop of wild strawberries I expected, or include the strawberry flowers in my spring flower collections, because I planned to do a flower-to-fruit-to-table blog post once the fruit was ripe. Back in May at least one quarter of the front yard here at Adirondack Lifestyle headquarters was covered in the white blooms of wild strawberry plants. I followed the progress of the plants closely and when the flowers turned into tiny green berries and those berries developed a pink hue, I thought I’d be harvesting sweet wild strawberries in a few days. You can imagine my dismay the next time I checked on the plants and found not one berry, green or red. The plants had been stripped clean of berries and any sign a berry once grew there.

I blamed the wild turkeys, deer, robins, and naturally the damnable noisy blue jays for the missing wild strawberries.

I was wrong.

Ziggy the Adirondack strawberry thief.

Ziggy, the official lifestyle hound, was caught red-pawed at the scene of the crime yesterday morning.

Apparently, he stopped by the strawberry patch on his way to decimate the raspberries.

Ziggy the Adirondack Raspberry Picking Dog

First step: scope out the raspberry patch for the best berries.

Stealthy approach the berries.

Snag the juiciest berry before mom gets it.

Wild Raspberries Thrive in the Adirondacks

Rubus Idaeobatus, Wild Red Raspberry.

The summer of 2012 is a banner one for wild raspberries in the Adirondacks. Discouraged by this year’s dry spring and early summer, I had given up the hope of harvesting any berries from my newly tended patch here at HQ. Although the Adirondacks remain under a “High” fire danger alert, the recent localized heavy rains were enough to reconstitute the dry, pebble-like raspberries found hanging on the bushes only 10 days ago.

Last evening’s neighborhood stroll yielded 2 quarts of luscious red raspberries.

Wild raspberries are hardy perennials, with a wooden stem covered in small thorns, or prickles. The sturdy constitution of these fruit bearing bushes is a double edged sword; they are the first plant to become established after a section of forest is cleared or thinned and are tough to eradicate. Not shy about asserting themselves, wild raspberries can become a nuisance when they spread to spots where they are not wanted and they are prone to taking over.

Raspberries are one of my favorite fruits and I am not alone. The deer family who visit Adirondack Lifestyle HQ are also big fans of wild Adirondack raspberries. Mrs. Doe and her fawns prefer the newly sprouted and tender raspberry seedlings that surprise us all with their appearance mere days after being weed whacked to the ground.

This year’s prodigious berry harvest is also good news to our black bear and bird friends. I am convinced the birds sound more robust and are singing a happier tune since we’ve had some rain. The resident biologist says a good berry season will help keep the bears in the woods where they belong and maybe keep Yellow-yellow out of trouble.

Although he’s not missing any kibble meals, the official Adirondack Lifestyle hound is also a big fan of wild Adirondack raspberries.

Ziggy helps himself to an Adirondack raspberry treat.

Adirondack raspberries and cream 07-2012

Freshly picked wild Raspberries and vanilla ice cream is the perfect human treat for an Adirondack summer evening.

Adirondack Springtime Distractions

A delicate Red Trillium, buried deep in my Adirondack wild raspberry patch.

I set out last Sunday with the best intentions and a humble goal: tame the unruly wild raspberry patch in the front yard.

There is nothing more delicious than a fresh wild berry; volunteer food that just needs a little help once established. Despite a lack of attention and cultivation we had a great Adirondack raspberry harvest last year. I decided not to press my benign neglect luck, grabbed the lopping shears and headed out to prune and clean the dead raspberry canes.

Aptly named Adirondack Trout Lily.

It wasn’t long however, before I was back in the house in search of my camera. Our yard is recently reclaimed forest, a hotbed of blooming Adirondack woodland wild flowers.
Although I tried hard to remain on task with the raspberry conquest, new flower discoveries were around every corner and in every decomposing nook and cranny. The beautiful tiny distractions proved too alluring.