Blackberry & Oats Muffins

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There are flavours that remind me of home, of being a kid, of those long holidays, of my family.

I keep going back to those flavours.
When I eat rice pudding I think of the two summers my grandma and I spent on Sylt so I could breathe the sea air. There were sunny days as well, but most of my memories centre around the rainy days that we spent in this cafe overlooking the beach where they had rice pudding and Germknödel and milkshakes.
When I eat blackberries I think of sitting on my grandma's back-porch picking blackberries off the bush that extends all around the table as the heat radiates off the ground. The grown-ups are drinking instant coffee, the kids, drinking grain coffee, are feeling all grown-up. The cream for the coffee comes in one of those small plastic jugs you get at the supermarket. I think of how calm it always felt, how calm it always feels when I go there.
When I eat something with oats I think about these super fine oat flakes you can get in Germany and how my sister and I would eat those with milk and sprinkle (ok, it tended to be more than just a light sprinkling) sugar on top when our mum wasn't looking. I sometimes wake up at night remembering that flavour.
A few weeks ago I read Lisa's post on blueberry lime oatmeal muffins on Homesick Texan. And started thinking of all those things I just told you about. I thought about how I wanted to make muffins that would combine some of my favourite childhood flavours.
Shall we make some muffins?

Blackberry & Oats Muffins (makes 12)
100g Oat Flour (take porridge oats and whizz them in a blender or food processor)
200g Plain Flour
50g Almond Flour
100g Raw Cane Sugar
1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Bicarb
1 tsp Salt
200g Blackberries, macerated in 1tbsp Sugar
125g Butter,  melted and slightly cooled
200ml Milk
100g Sour Cream
1 Egg


Preheat your oven to 175˚C and line a muffin tin with paper cases.
Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl and set aside.
Whisk together the wet ingredients and then fold the wet mix into the dry mix until the two are just combined.
Scoop about a tablespoon of batter into each muffin case, then distribute the blackberries evenly across the muffins. Top with the remaining batter. I ended up with 12 fairly full muffin cases. If you would rather have smaller muffins, you could also use more muffin cases but I wanted domed muffins of awesomeness.
Bake the muffins for 25-30 minutes until the tops are golden.
Allow the muffins to cool slightly before turning them out on a wire-rack.
Now, go and find some milk because it's gonna go really well with a muffin!

Triple Berry Cobbler

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Today's recipe is one I made for my grandma's birthday dinner last weekend. We all got together and my mum and my aunt made stuffed veal breast (because that's what my grandma always made for big family-meals). We ate our own weight in cheese at the farmers market, and then we brought even more home. I baked a cake, or two. And then there was the berry cobbler.
When I was in high school I used to make this apple and berry cobbler whenever I had people over. The main reason was that you could bake it in advance, take it out of the oven slightly early and then just stick it back in when people were nearly done eating their pasta.
I like pasta. A lot. And if I'm having people over for dinner chances are fairly hight that  it's going to involve pasta. I don't know about you, but I don't see the point in slaving in the kitchen all day long when people come over for the company. So why not eat something that's simple and will allow everybody do focus on what's important - gossip :)
Anyhow, how did we end up with the pasta? Let's get back to dessert!
So, what can I tell you about the cobbler, other than that I tend to stop talking and focus on eating as much as I can when anything involving a cobbler or crumble or buckle or a crisp is sitting in front of me. Because somehow these dishes make a bad day seem much better and a good day (like this time I made it) just phenomenal.
This cobbler is a twist on the one I used to make in high school which was based on a recipe in one of the early Jamie Oliver cookbooks (before he went off to save the world and whatnot).

Triple Berry Cobbler
1kg Blueberries, Blackberries, and Strawberries (not each but that's the combined weight)
2 tsp Balsamic Vinegar
100g Sugar
2 tsp Cornflour
200g Flour
1 scant tsp Baking Powder
1 scant tsp Salt
200ml Milk
150g Butter
Juice of 1/2 Lime
Cinnamon & Nutmeg

Preheat your oven to 180˚C.
Combine the berries (half or quarter the strawberries), balsamic vinegar and 150g of the sugar in a saucepan and heat over a medium heat for a few minutes. The berries will begin to sweat. Add the cornflour, stir until everything is combined and transfer into a 23cm or so pie dish (one of those deep ones).
Mix the milk and lime and set aside (I  started doing this when I didn't have any buttermilk at home with some lemon juice, but the lime juice adds a lovely flavour you don't get when you're using buttermilk, hence the extra step).
Combine the flour, baking powder, dals and remaining 50g sugar in a bowl, cut in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add a generous pinch of nutmeg, then stir in the milk.
Drop pieces of the (fairly sticky) dough onto the berries. They don't have to be pretty or completely equal in size, I tend to aim for plum-sized blobs of dough.
Sprinkle with some cinnamon and perhaps another tablespoon or so of sugar and then it's off into the oven for 40-50 minutes until the biscuits are golden and the fruit is bubbling from between the biscuits.
This cobbler is lovely by itself, but ice-cream or whipped cream or even custard obviously don't hurt either.