Recipe; delicious desserts using autumn blackberries

Darina Allen on how to make delicious desserts using autumn blackberries

Blackberry Ice Cubes
Pop a fat juicy blackberry into each section of an ice cube tray, add a tiny sweet geranium or mint leaf if you have them to hand. Fill with cold water – freeze. Pop into a glass of dry white wine, homemade lemonade or champagne.

Blackberry and Sweet
Geranium Sorbet
The lemon-scented leaves of Pelargonium Graveolens have an extraordinary affinity with blackberries, most garden centres have this variety which will grow in a pot but also over-winters outside in milder parts of Ireland.
Serves 6
› 1 lb (450g) blackberries
› 4 ozs (110g) sugar
› 1/4 pint (150ml) water
› 4-6 large sweet geranium leaves (depending on size)
Put the sugar, water and sweet geranium leaves into a saucepan and bring slowly to the boil, boil for 3-4 minutes. Allow to cool. Meanwhile, liquidise and sieve the blackberries through a nylon sieve. When the syrup is cold, mix with the blackberry puree, taste, it ought to taste a little too sweet at this stage, but add some fresh lemon juice if it's cloying. Freeze in a sorbetiere for about 20 minutes. Alternatively put into a freezer until almost frozen, then take it out and break up the crystals with a whisk or in a food processor, return to the freezer and repeat once or twice more. If you do not have a sorbetiere you might like to fold half a stiffly beaten egg white into the sorbet to lighten the texture.
Serve a scoop of sorbet on chilled white plates, decorate with whole blackberries and sweet geranium leaves.