Campfire Blackberry Cobbler

I never planned to write a blackberry foraging post, because I cultivate my own canes (though not particularly well). And while I do plant wild native perennials and annuals here and there in my landscaping, under the rubric of “reverse foraging”, my garden blackberry canes are truly domestic with no prickles to protect them.

Recently, however, I had the chance to forage in the wild for blackberries, with all the scratches and scrapes that make the harvest all the sweeter.

A picture showing the ridged stem and sharp prickles of a blackberry cane, amongst ripening blackberry fruit — Wild blackberries feature ridged canes covered in sharp prickles

The blackberry family, Rubus, includes other cane fruit as well, such as Japanese wineberries, dewberries, black raspberries and even regular red raspberries. The “real” blackberries have fruit with a solid cores (as opposed to raspberries, for instance, which have a hollow center because they separate from their stems when picked). The canes themselves are grooved, and covered with prickles—not thorns, technically—which may be straight or curved.

The two dominant varieties of blackberry in Maryland appear to be R. allegheniensis and R. pensilvanicus, but I have yet to find any website which clearly says how to distinguish the two. Most just say that the Allegheny blackberry is the “common” wild blackberry that one finds everywhere. Which isn’t particularly helpful. Perhaps it doesn’t matter.

A handful of blackberries — Blackberries are sweeter for the suffering

What to do with blackberries once I’d picked them? Cobbler, of course!

Unfortunately, I’ve never found a campfire blackberry cobbler recipe that met my dietary requirement. So, I created one to celebrate my berry bounty. Note this recipe cannot be called “paleo” in the strictest sense because of the sugar. I don’t believe using coconut sugar instead of regular white table sugar improves anything, either from a health or a sustainability perspective. And other “paleo” sweeteners—maple syrup and honey—change the texture and flavor of the dish. Instead of these substitutions, I cut back on the sugar amounts significantly in both the berries and the topping, to really let the flavor of the blackberries take center stage.

To take this recipe camping, mix and transport the tapioca flour and 1/2 cup sugar in one container. In a separate container, pack the almond flour, coconut flour, salt, and 1/3 cup sugar for the topping. These two containers can be stored at room temperature with other non-perishable ingredients. Keep the butter in a cooler with ice until time to make the cobbler.

Cooking the blackberries over the campfire before adding the topping

While I generally don’t advocate single-use or disposable products, I will make an exception for this recipe. I tried lining my Dutch oven with foil for easier clean-up, but the berry-sugar liquid bubbled over the edge and caramelized onto the cast iron. It practically turned to glue, welding bits of foil in place like amber imprisoning an insect. In this particular case, spending the extra money on an aluminum Dutch oven liner would have actually made a big improvement, and better protected the seasoning on the cast iron.