Late Summer Fruits of Darkness

Over at SLOG Dan has a fit against blackberries, surprisingly, I had to concur in the comments:

Blackberries are The Dark Lord's fruit.

I grew up in Sydney, Australia where blackberries grow everywhere. My Mum loved gardens but hated gardening and generally lived in abject terror of nature. She ultimately got her way with a huge rockery garden complete with waterfall, pond and fountain.

And, as you might expect, being the eldest son in an Irish Catholic family the task of looking after the garden fell to me.

Did you know that blackberries love rockeries? They grew everywhere - under every rock, and entwined in every plant and tree. I’m not talking about the fluffy-bunny, touchy-feely, bountiful fruit kind you see here in the North-west… oh no. I’m talking about the enormous flesh-gouging and blood-feasting kind with long arching wrist-thick stalks and tiny mean berries.

The kind that you cut back and pull out with blood covered arms on a Sunday and have grown back before the wounds they inflicted have even scabbed over to begin healing. They grew with the unnatural vigor that only comes through unholy compacts with dark powers. Yes, I hates them precioussss.

Even though they are evil to their tiny diamond hard tooth-destroying seeds, He Who Must Be Obeyed (my guy) loves them. For his recent birthday I made him a Spice Cake with Blackberry filling and Cream Cheese Frosting which got pretty good reviews.

Yet with every bite there was this uneasy feeling and the slight metallic tang of my own blood on my tongue.

~GC

P.s. If you decide to make the cake, I recommend making two batches to get enough height and I used 2 nine inch pans for each batch to avoid cutting. I also cut down the confectioners’ sugar in the frosting by one cup (to 4 cups – Christ in a coma!)

Which is all really just a sneaky way of recommending the Spice Cake which really did look like this, but taller.

And if I ever find out who ate the blackberries I had to finish it, there will be trouble.