The appearance of blackberries at the start of September marks the beginning of Autumn. We have lots of blackberry bushes around our glamping site and many others dotted around the grounds. Our glampers are able to take advantage of this seasonal crop and go blackberry picking on their doorstep – it is a perfect activity to do with children in the great outdoors and we have lovely memories of blackberry picking on holiday.

For the past few years we have used them to make blackberry jam and we often mix them with some of our cooking apples to create a lovely fruit crumble (yum!) and have also made blackberry muffins. They can of course also be used as part of nature-inspired dishes in the mud kitchen! We have been meaning to make a blackberry compote so this week we collected some and put our cooking skills to the test.

We followed this simple recipe from the BBC Good Food website but only used a third of the ingredients. Other recipes follow a similar method to cooking jam but this was quick and easy. 

We tried the compote on one of our favourite desserts – pancakes. It was very much enjoyed and provided a different and seasonal flavour compared to our usual favourites – nutella or honey!

There are so many ways compote can be used – mixed with a softened tub of vanilla ice cream to create a blackberry ripple ice cream, on top of a vanilla cheese cake or mixed with a rice pudding or greek yoghurt, with apple scones and clotted cream – the possibilities are endless. Check out the food magazines Delicious and Olive for more ideas and inspiration.

Next year we need to get picking earlier and freeze batches so we can try some more delicious recipes!