The recent spate of sunny weather has left many people yearning for summer and all the delights that the season brings. Raspberries are definitely one of the best things about summer, as there are many fantastic ideas to try out.
Start the day off in the best possible way – add a few to cereal in the morning, pop some in your porridge or make a fresh fruit smoothie with raspberries as one of the star ingredients. Growing your own raspberries is a great way to get the freshest possible fruit and the plants can yield a lot of fruit. This article from The Guardian has some tips for two crops of fruit in the growing season.
Baking
There are so many ways to bring raspberries into your baking. If you’re a fan of brownies why not try adding a handful, folding them in to the batter before baking? A squidgy dark chocolate brownie with sweet, melting raspberries in the centre is a thing of beauty!
If cheesecake is more your thing then try a baked raspberry cheesecake, which would be ideal for a summer dinner party. Alternatively, match the fruit with almonds in a raspberry and almond cake and if you want raspberries out of season, then this sort of cake can be made perfectly with raspberry food flavouring, such as that from http://www.foodieflavours.com/shop/flavours/natural-flavouring/raspberry/. In fact, as fresh fruit can make baked items act a little oddly, raspberry food flavouring can even work better than the real thing!
Another way to help keep the raspberry flavour throughout the year is to make your own jam. If you’ve never made it before, then jam may seem a bit fiddly, but it can actually be very easy and leaves you feeling like a domestic god or goddess!
Cool down
If the weather starts to heat up, then we’ll all need ice cream. Raspberry ripple is the creamy classic from childhood that can be surprisingly easy to make yourself and it’s ideal as there are many recipes that don’t even require an ice cream machine.
Perhaps an ice cold drink would be a better way to cool down? Try making homemade lemonade with added raspberries then serve the beautiful pink drink over piles of ice. Whatever happens with the weather this summer, bring on the raspberries!