My hands and feet are covered in scratches from my forage into blackberry bushes this weekend, but it was so worth it. I picked about 2 quarts worth in less than an hour, and then spent about 4 hours in the kitchen creating these beauties:
The peach and blackberry galette was inspired by a recipe I found via gojee.com (my go-to lately for searching recipes by ingredient) which I decided to make with the excess pastry left over from the tarts. Because the tart pastry was so sweet it ended up tasting like a giant shortbread cookie (not a bad thing, in my books), and the peaches and blackberries were such a good complement.
The blackberry custard tarts are my best recipe find in a while. They were fairly time-consuming (such an understatement considering I picked the blackberries myself in addition to the many stages of pastry prep). Since I was using mini tart pans I had to halve the custard recipe and even then I still ended up tossing a bit of the custard mix down the drain, so next time I will either buy more tart pans or get a regular size pan. These are too good to waste.
There are still lots of blackberries remaining from the weekend, some of which I tossed in a salad (the blackberry juices were really good with the olive oil and balsamic dressing I made). I think the rest will go in a blackberry apple crisp later this week ...
