Blackberry Pudding

Blackberry Pudding, a (small) recipe by Dominique Rock, inspired by older recipes... last edited on Jan 1 2025 JUMP TO RECIPE

When my roommate brought back home from an office party a little basket of blackberries last month, 

which we both usually never buy, it reminded me of my youth. We had a cottage, I mean my parents when I was a kid and teen, near Val-des-Monts, Québec, where there was loooots of nature... But there was also electricity and motor bikes and outboard cruisers... anyways, around the end of July, every year, mid-august, there was lots, and lots of wild raspberries to be picked.

The neighbours had a tradition recipe for these, the Wild Raspberry Pudding. I handed out the recipe, a sample for my mother to taste, and full baskets of raspberries and pleaded her to bake one (or more... always...), and adopt this tradition.

 

She disdained it like my parents looked with contempt everything else from that family, saying that this recipe was a disastrous and very low class way to treat the very noble raspberries, similar in taste to the corn dogs they ate (which I also asked for, to no avail). So my parents kept eating the "noble" raspberries fresh, sometimes with cream and a bit of sugar, and my mom refused to bake the Wild Raspberry Pudding.

After we sold the cottage when I was like 16 yo, I completely forgot about that recipe. The magic of the sweet and somewhat bitter taste stuck in my head though, and when I saw the blackberries my roommate brought, my brain automatically connected with the Wild Raspberry Pudding from my youth.

So I started my quest on the Internet to find a similar recipe. I found one that seemed to look the same in the pics, and knowing baking somewhat, I was figuring it'd be similar a taste.

So it's a recipe found on Food dot com, that was submitted by Derf2440, who turns out to be Dorothy from B.C. who passed away in 2013; she said in her post that it's a recipe from Canadian Living magazine, and I bet it's the same recipe that my neighbours used half a century ago; kind of a basic popular recipe that goes around, and can actually be adapted to other fruits, and more.

But since my tools are very limited -all I ever owned I lost (long story, actually told earlier on this blog)-, I had to adapt it: I had only a small Corning Ware 6.5 X 6.5 X 2 inches pan. On top of this, the fresh blackberry left-over my roommate brought home totaled 167 grams, so about 8 oz, that was a little more than half the frozen raspberries in Derf2440's recipe, but I liked the proportions of it and estimated that about half of it all would fit my pan.

And it did; I tweaked a few ingredients for different reasons, and adapted it to fresh fruits, but the recipe can surely be done with frozen blackberries or raspberries. Fresh blackberries are quite firm compared to raspberries, and probably also to frozen berries, they remain somewhat complete and firm even after 50 minutes baking, and I like that.

The final  result is somewhat similar to the most popular dessert half a century ago and more in Québec: the Pouding Chômeur, but much less sweet, about half the sugar, and with fresh fruits so it's actually almost a healthy dessert, but still very much down to Earth and hearty fulfilling dessert (or breakfast actually); too harsh and low class for my parents who tried to obliterate the taste from my life and that's very sad.

I like hearty foods, usual and popular recipes from all over the world with simple available and affordable ingredients; I'm mostly poor and try to make best with what's on special and available, most time ending with very healthy plates and forcing me to innovate and find new and old ways to cook I might have forgotten.

I now intend to try this recipe (and the pouding chômeur recipe which I'm perfecting RN), in different pans, the type of pans people who never bake have: foil pans from the dollar store, forgotten bread pans, or simply a simple stove-top pot, so that anyone will want to start to bake.

This is my 1st attempt at publishing a recipe with pics of the whole procedure so please bare with me, this probably isn't the best place to do that but I'll try

Dominique Rock

Blackberry Pudding
small recipe, adapted by Dominique Rock

170 gr (8 oz) blackberries (or raspberries)
5 TBsp sugar (I used brown sugar...)

4 TBsp (1/4 cup) butter
6 TBsp sugar (again I used brown sugar, was out of white)
3 TBsp milk (I always use almond milk)
2/3 cup flour
1 egg
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt

Pro baker instructions syrup: add 2 TBsp sugar and lemon juice to the fresh berries to extract their juice, then extend it with water to 3/4 cup, add 3 TBsp sugar, bring to a boil, then set aside and let cool down; mix butter with 6 TBsp sugar, egg and milk, then dry ingredients; toss berries in a 6,6 X 6.5 X 2 inches pan (or a bread pan, could be 8 X 4 X 2,7 foil), pour batter on top, then pour syrup on top; bake 50 minutes @ 350

Detailed instructions

So the 1st move is actually to take the butter and the egg out of the fridge an hour before.

Then extract some berry juice from the fresh fruits. Here's how:

after rinsing the berries, toss them in a bowl and squeeze about half a lemon (or I guess 1 TBsp of bottled concentrated lemon juice) on the berries, with 2 TBsp of sugar, and let sit 20-40 minutes, stirring occasionally;

 

juice will come out; toss the berries in the baking pan, and extend this juice with water to 3/4 cup (Okay I changed the recipe since the pics, it is 3/4 of a cup).

Add 3 TBsp of sugar to the juice and bring to a boil in a stove-top pan, then set aside and let cool down while we blend the batter.

 

in a bowl, drop:
6 TBsp sugar
1/4 cup softened butter (or 4 TBsp)

- mix with a wood spoon

- add egg
- mix again
- add 1/3 cup of flour, then

- drop baking powder and salt on top of the flour
- add the other 1/3 cup of flour

 

- simply incorporate the flour in the mix without over doing it; batter will be thick.

 

- pour the batter over the berries in the pan

(the lumps in the batter are butter (it's not a problem), it's Winter and my butter wouldn't get soft on the counter)

 - pour the 1 1/4 cup of cooled down syrup on top of the batter

- bake 50 minutes 350

notes:
(this is a small recipe thought for a 6.5 X 6.5 X 2 inches pan; it would also work in a bread pan, if using foil bread pan 8 X 4 X 3 it might be a little tight and would look different as the cake would rise more, I'd need to try); as you can see, the serving bowl is almost as big as the baking pan... it's a small recipe.

If you have questions, ask me on Bluesky

Au revoir 😋 Dominique Rock

P.S. as I'm editing this recipe (so ashamed I published with errors in the instructions) I realize how cool it is that it perfectly fits the mood of my blog, with a deep look into its social and philosophical roots; it is here presented as a clash between two social classes of French Canadians, one who searches refinement and actually be more like the British who had conquered us two Centuries before, and one who enjoys fully being who they are: grassroots uneducated people who were seen and qualified by some as parvenus (they owned a garage and were actually richer than my parents), and I'm surprised to find the exact same term we use in French is used also in English, parvenu; So yes, actually my Great Grand-Father was a blacksmith and became rich with the birth of the Railways, and he sent his last son to school, and he became doctor, and my father also went to university... As for the neighbors at our cottage, I couldn't see, myself, the social clash, as I'm in the autistic spectrum (ASD), therefore I don't perceive these social subtleties, I can now rationalize and understand them when explained (but still cannot 'perceive' them), but not when I was a child or a teen, I wasn't able to. So I present the story as I perceive it now, a clash between social classes, whereas back then I simply couldn't see why that dessert didn't deserve respect, not even a try, since it was so tasty, and also since my mom baked the Pouding Chômeur, a very popular dessert amongst the lower classes, and similar recipe, but I realized later in life, my Mom actually seldom baked the Pouding Chômeur, and only after her many children demanded it. I also realized her version of the Pouding Chômeur was a toned down version from her mother, more acceptable to more 'refined' palates. But I'm in search of the ideal Pouding Chômeur recipe, a story to be followed soon on Mue à l'envers.

New Banana Cookies

New Banana Cookies
by Dominique Rock

these make a perfect breakfast, not too sweet and healthy

Note: (Jan. 2, 2025) I was out of vegetable oil, so I replaced it by 2 TBsp more apple sauce (4 total) (also my bananas were medium-small) and they turned out even better, especially the day after; reheated about five seconds each in the microwave, they make a perfect breakfast, for me anyways; more apple sauce masks the banana taste that was a little too strong the day after for my taste with the 1st recipe. Soon I will delete this and simply update the recipe; always feel free to improvise and tweak recipes 😼

2 medium ripe bananas, mashed, or more to taste
2 TBsp applesauce
2 TBsp vegetable oil
2 TBsp butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups flour
1/3 cup mini chocolate chips (Optional)
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt

Just drop all ingredients, except flour+ powders and choco chips, in a large bowl and mix with a wooden spoon (or a mixer if you have one);

add and incorporate the flour (adding the baking powders and salt same time) to the mix; then add the mini choco chips;

using  2 spoons drop dough on two baking sheets with parchment paper, makes 15-20 cookies;

cook 12 minutes at 350

Note: I made again this recipe this morning but I was out of vegetable oil; I added one TBsp of apple sauce and kept it at 2 TBspoon of butter and it came out pretty much the same; the 3rd was the last TBspoon of apple sauce too; I used brown sugar 'cause I was low on white sugar, any sugar will do the job.

see this recipe as a basis that you can model to what you have at hand, no more apple sauce? add oil or butter; low on flour, lower the other ingredients...

also I like the mini chocolate chips but they can be replaced by chopped nuts or even peanuts, or you put both choco chips and nuts... orange or lemon zest... be creative.

Make it your recipe, change it and submit it again with your name on it (that's what I did hehe)

Dominique Rock

Human Stories

 There was a time in human history, and for many, many millennia, when facts and reality blended on a daily basis with made up stories, with dreams, spending many hours discussing and elaborating them together by the fire.

These were times when the night was dark, very dark. People nowadays don't realize how dark it was on New Moon or cloudy nights; just beyond the fire…. have you ever been around a campfire in the wild? or even by a cottage? Soon the night surrounds you like a wall, only a little circle of light around the fire remains, and as the hours pass by and more wood is added to the fire, with the social circle also being restrained to the circle of light surrounding the fire, and more and more as the night deepens, and strange cracking and other noises can be heard here and there through the night coming from the outside the circle of light…

The reality is changed by the night, and any fact becomes as uncertain as the weird sounds coming from the night. And people shared their dreams, many of which obviously partly invented (did we remember our dreams more 50 000 years ago? I don’t think so; they were made up), and everything blended together, and…

Faith! That is what is distinctive of Homo Sapiens: faith. So people believed the stories as true, think of Ancient Greeks… Did they really believe in Zeus and all? Yes and no.

Contrary to the monotheist religions that followed up, the Ancient Greeks knew their Pantheon of Gods were made up stories. They did! And same with the First Nations of America, a small glimpse of what our ancestors might have behaved like, all First Nations people knew that dreams and facts blended, that facts are always told, reported, so a story anyways.

So the life of the humans, well Homo Sapiens, is made up of a blend of stories some based on facts, but the same fact can be seen many ways, and humans have known that for a very long time; for always actually. This is what humanity is: stories and faith. If you believe it, it becomes true, you just need to make it up well, so that people believe it. It’s been like that for always, this IS what a human is. The Ancient Greeks structured it into tragedy and comedy, and on this is still based the whole theater and film industry of making stories that rules our world. How many times did fiction foretold reality?

And so Neanderthal, with whom Sapiens mixed, wasn’t like that at all. They didn’t have faith nor stories. Most certainly, they spoke little by the fire.

Neanderthal acted exactly like those in the spectrum of autism, and research is ongoing to link autism with Neanderthal.

Some of us humans have a hard time believing; in anything. It’s the Neanderthal genes.

In the long story of humanity, there’s been so many ways to be human, it all narrowed down to a few large cultures nowadays but there were so many ways to be, to think… the set of values around which groups of people gathered, their beliefs… has been very, very diverse, just think of the Aztecs normalizing human sacrifice, and making it a show and a a cultural value… that’s just one exemple. There existed many human societies whose values would shock us now, to the point that they’d be very difficult to believe.

But what stands out is that most if not all of the members of these human communities firmly believed in the story they lived in. They eventually gathered more people around one fictional idea and went to war with it… My story is true, I have more believers following me…

All this because we’re losing capacity to realize that reality has many sides. No, it’s impossible for a reporter, the media, to be totally objective. Impossible. It’s always a story told a certain way, that you believe or decide not to.

 

Dominique Rock

 OK wow I still have that Blog haha... that no one ever reads

what have I got to say? not much