Foraging and Frozen Yogurt

Hello again, on a rather cloudy and humid day!

There is something very satisfying about going blackberrying, and very reminiscent of  childhood school holidays, and we are fortunate enough to have a good crop of wild blackberries in the fields behind our road.  We also have wild raspberries, but they are pretty much finished now.

Daisy Dog and I have been foraging in the fields a couple of times over the past week and have returned home with stained fingers, a few stinging nettle stings (that's just me - Daisy returned unscathed) but a good haul of plump, juicy berries.

I made blackberry and apple crumble, and some blackberry frozen yogurt, which is probably my favourite, and is so easy and cheap to make.  There are loads of ways to make it, but here is my cheat's quick and easy way:

Start with roughly the same volume (not weight) of berries and low fat natural yogurt.  You could use any type of natural yogurt but I buy big tubs of local Lancashire yogurt, which are often on sale for a pound and are very good indeed.  You can vary the ratio of berries to yogurt, depending on what you have picked and what you have to hand.  On this occasion I had rather more berries than yogurt, but that was perfectly OK for me!

Place the berries in a colander and wash well under running water to get rid of all the dust and bits you don't want.  Pat gently in kitchen roll to dry them and then place them in a freezer container.  I have a brilliant container for this which I bought from Tupperware many years ago, and it is wide and shallow, so things freeze very rapidly and it is easy to slide into the freezer drawer.

Using a potato masher, crush the berries until they are broken up but not pulverised as it's nice to have some texture.  It should look something like this:

You can see the juice is already starting to flow out as they were such juicy blackberries!  

Next, sprinkle over some caster sugar.  I don't like things overly sweet, so used a generously heaped tablespoon for about a pint jug full of blackberries.  Mix the sugar in well.

Then add the yogurt.  I used just under a pint of yogurt.  Whisk it in with a large fork or a hand whisk.  You may have a lot of juice appearing but don't worry, just keep mixing and mixing until it is all amalgamated.

Then put on the lid and pop the whole thing into the freezer.  Now comes the important bit!  Every hour (or so) take it out of the freezer and using a large fork, whisk it up a bit, and mix the frozen edges into the middle.  This will help prevent large ice crystals forming and keep the mixture smoother.  Do this every hour and your frozen yogurt will be ready to use in about 4 to 5 hours.  If you have a deeper container it will be 5 or 6 hours.  This is obviously something to make when you are planning to be home for a good chunk of time!

I think this is nicer served slightly softer, but you can make it firmer if you wish.  If you don't want to serve it straight away,  leave it in the freezer until 20 minutes or so before you want to use it and then take it out to soften up a little and give it a good mixing with the large fork.

Absolutely delicious!  Just look at that colour!   With nature this amazing, who needs artificial colours??

Donna x