Blackberry Bramble Bars with Oatmeal Streusel and a Whimsical Memory

“Blackberry Bramble Bars” are summer dessert bars which are decedent and delicious. I’m not holding back. The flavors of fresh blackberries combined with a rich oatmeal crust and streusel topping make a great combination. Blackberries are fruity, tangy and sweet yet tart. They are a luxury “flavor” and treat — not available during much of the year. In Louisiana, wild blackberries ripen in May. I have a few volunteer blackberry bushes at the very back of my yard which just happen to grow on their own each spring. When I noticed a recipe in our local newspaper for “Blackberry Crumble Bars,” I became excited and remembered my own blackberry bushes. I walked outdoors to check on my berry briers (also known as weeds). Alas, this year, there were only a few blackberries — not enough to make a dessert. However, now I’m in the mood to try the blackberry recipe. So I supplemented my backyard berries with purchased ones. The dessert was very crumbly — it had a bottom oatmeal crust, followed with a layer of cooked blackberry sauce and finished with dollops of the oatmeal crust making the streusel topping. Looked and tasted delicious. And, the best part is that this recipe is easy to make — the crust is a “one-bowl” mixture and the blackberry sauce is easy, too.

Wild Blackberries and Brambles

May the best time to find local blackberries in Louisiana and to make this dessert. The blackberry bushes grow wild in ditches along roads and any sunny place that they can find. Although I didn’t plant blackberry bushes, a few scavenger plants always seem to find their way into my yard. Most of the year, they are annoying thorns. In the late spring, however, the bushes redeem themselves with the wonderful berries.

Why a bramble?

The annoying briers with thorns are called, “brambles.” If you have ever gone blackberry picking, you can understand. Blackberries grow in dense thickets and the briers have sharp, sticky thorns. Getting to the blackberries requires reaching into the thickets. (It is impossible to pull the briers apart to walk through the brambles.) Be prepared for scratches and stickers which come with a blackberry picking session. Since brambles are so much part of picking blackberries, I decided to call my dessert, “Blackberry Bramble Bars.”

Blackberry Picking Memory

Going blackberry picking as a very young child is one of my fondest memories. This was in the rural Shenandoah Valley way out in the countryside down several dirt roads on Mr. Victor Glick’s farm. (There were 12 Glick siblings — it was a large Brethern family — so you always had to specify which grown sibling you were talking about.) We had a great time and picked buckets of blackberries which my mother planned to use for making jam. However, when we got ready to leave, the car ran into a ditch. Back in those days, there were no cell phones or cell phone towers. Really, very few phones. We were stuck in the countrye and it was too far to walk! We had no choice to wait and wait until someone came along. Finally, a farmer on a tractor came rumbling by. He was able to use a rope (or chain) and pull us out. We were on our way again. But, for a small girl — it was a very scary and long day.

Re-Visit to Shenandoah Valley

As the years went by, my mother aged and could no longer drive from her retirement home. But, she still enjoyed going for rides in the countryside. My brother and I took her out one Sunday afternoon to some of those old favorite spots in the rural valley. The scenery in the Shenandoah Valley is so beautiful; we had a refreshing day.

Where did we go on our drive in the valley countryside? Our route took us through the very small, unincorporated community called, “Briery Branch.” How ironic. I never gave the name much thought, but now wonder if the name could have something to do with blackberries and their briery brambles!

Recipe Inspiration

The recipe for “Blackberry Crumb Bars” was featured recently in our Sunday newspaper, The Advocate. The author and her family had visited a flower “farm” in the Cajun part of the state several hours away — picking both flowers and blackberries.What a fun family day and outing! She returned home and made the delicious-looking blackberry dessert. Her reference recipe was from Bake from Scratch (bakefromscratch.com“) — a food digital site and print magazine in the Hoffman Media, LLC. conglomerate family of southern food/lifestyle magazines. (I tried to look up the recipe on their digital site; they had many fruit “crumble” recipes, but not this exact one.) Anyway, I was excited to try The Advocate recipe — with my store-bought supplementary blackberries.

Oops…

I used The Advocate’s recipe as a starting point and adapted it as I went along. The newspaper recipe version had a major oops…..the baking pan apparently was changed to a smaller size from the original size in Bake from Scratch. I had so much crumb crust and topping, that I could have made two desserts!!! I ended up making the recipe several times to get it right and eventually adjusted my ingredients to fit both a 9″x 9″ pan as well as a 9″ x 13″ pan.

Backberry Bramble Recipe

The recipe is two parts — a crumb crust with topping and blackberry sauce filling. I suggest making the filling first and setting it aside while making the crust.

Blackberry Sauce

It really doesn’t work to add raw blackberries with sugar for a filling — it needs to be a cooked and thickened sauce. But, that’s easy to do. Just cook blackberries with sugar/water and a little lemon juice. Then, off the stove, add cornstarch to thicken. Finish by letting the blackberries bubble and thicken on the stove (on low heat) until a wonderful sauce emerges.

Here are the ingredients for the sauce. Blackberries (and you need a lot for the 9″x 13″ version — 24 oz), sugar, lemon juice, cornstarch and water.

To make the sauce, bring the blackberries, sugar, lemon juice and some water to boil on the stove, Let the mixture simmer — on low heat — until the blackberries are cooked and begin to fall apart

The sauce needs to be thickened. Cornstarch works well. Add cornstarch to cold water — off the stove. Off the stove, add the cornstarch slurry to the cooked blackberries. Stir in the cornstarch.

Then cook on low heat until the sauce thickens and bubbles. Stir and stir. Don’t let the sauce burn or clump.

Let the sauce cool off the stove to room temperature while making the crust and struesel topping.

“One Bowl” Crust and Streusel Topping

For the crust and topping, this turned out to be a very simple recipe to mix up. No need to get out an electric mixer. Just use a large bowl to mix up the ingredients. I added ingredients one at a time and mixed well until all were added in.

Here are the ingredients for the crust and streusel topping.

First mix together all the dry ingredients — flour, baking powder and salt. Add the granulated sugar, brown sugar.

Melt the butter and stir in along with the vanilla extract. I used the microwave oven to melt the butter. Use a large spoon, stir in the vanilla extract and melted butter.

Reserve out one cup to sprinkle on as the topping. Press the remainder into a foil-lined, oiled 9″ x 9″ baking pan (or a 9″ x 13″ pan if making larger version). Let the foil overhang the edges of the pan. Then you can grab the foil to lift the bars out of the baking pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. The crust should begin to set and become brown around the edges.

Spread on the blackberry sauce.

Sprinkle on the reserved topping.

Bake for 30 – 45 minutes until the filling bubbles and topping browns. Cover with foil during the last 10 minutes of cooking, if needed if the topping browns before the filling begins to bubble.

Let the baked bars cool to room temperature. Then lift by the handles to remove the bars to cutting block. Cut nto pieces.

After cooling, these are ready to serve. These are crumbly; but mighty good. (With the final version, the crust is not as thick, since the crust is spread into the larger 9″ x 13″ pan.)

These bars showcase the blackberry flavor. A great summer dessert!

Every summer I pull up my blackberry briers because they are so annoying. And, I miss them every spring. I was so envious of the Advocate writer and her family who went flower and blackberry picking at a commercial flower “farm” several hours away from Baton Rouge in the rural part of the state in Cajun country. Their adventure reminds me of growing up in rural Virginia!

As a postscript, I made a blueberry streusel bar recipe using scaled down recipe proportions to fit a 9″ x 9″ baking pan. I used a can of blueberry pie filling which I had on hand as well as quick-cooking oatmeal in this dessert.

These “Blueberry Dessert Bars” turned out well, too. Yum! Recipe will follow later in the summer.