When there are too many overburdened mulberry trees around, they cannot be left groaning. Something has to be done to relieve them of their heavy load.
These exhausted trees need help. Their limbs are groaning and they are begging you to help them once again stretch up to the skies! I am hoping you will be raring to go…. get those gloves and old clothes on, and go save a tree!!
OUR NEW FAVOURITE THING…
I am telling you, after discovering Mulberry Butter it certainly has changed our outlook on life…well at least our look on late Spring. Diving into the mulberry butter jars is just about our favourite thing to do at any given meal at the moment.
PICKING TIP
If you are able, spreading a cloth (that will bear the stains forever afterwards) or sheet of plastic below the tree and shaking the tree is by far the easiest method. I did say above to put gloves on, but in the heat, that might just be too uncomfortable.
My hands were completely purple after my little foraging foray but the dye washed off my skin pretty quickly. As for my clothes, they are now designated ‘scrumping gear.’
Playing around with mulberries and testing quite a few different recipes, I feel the Mulberry Butter recipe printed below really hits the spot.
JUST ABOUT ANYTHING GOES WITH MULBERRY BUTTER
Spread thickly on a slice of toast, with or without labne or cream cheese or else dropped onto pikelets, pancakes or blinis, with a dollop of yogurt…is truly superlative. I have to say, it’s definitely worth trying. This recipe really should not be overlooked as long as there are a few mulberries begging to be picked.
There are still a few weeks left to go find a tree in fruit and I implore you to get out there and search!
YOU CAN BE EATING MULBERRY BUTTER WITHIN ONE AND A HALF HOURS OF PICKING THEM
This Mulberry Butter is a real treat and better still, you can be eating it within 90 minutes of picking the fruit! It will still be warm at that stage. It’s just great, hot or cold.
Mulberries are quite sweet so I suggest adding the least amount of sugar first. This Mulberry Butter is best not made too sweet and kept a little tart. The lemon juice sets it off beautifully and I urge you to keep tasting it and adjusting the sweetness to your liking, before you add the eggs.
DEPENDING ON WHAT TYPE OF MULBERRY YOU USE, LEADS TO THE AMOUNT NEEDED
The first time I made this recipe, I had picked mulberries of the round variety which I now understand have far more seeds and their pulp is thicker. When making the puree, ready for the next step to make the butter, I was left with a copious amount of seeds, stalks and flesh that refused to pass through the sieve. Hence 750g gave me just over one cup of mulberry juice and puree and I was left with such a lot to throw to the chickens sadly….. but they did love it!
The long mulberry variety are more juicy and hence, there is less pulp and more juice when pushing the cooked fruit through the sieve. For this reason, you need to be aware of which mulberry you have chosen. Once you have boiled the mulberries, you need to mash them to extract the juice. 1 and a half cups of liquid is ideal but the recipe still works with just 1 cup.
- 750g to 1 kg short, fat mulberries
- or 500g long mulberries,
- 1 to 2 Tbsp lemon juice
- ¼ - ¾ cup sugar
- 45g butter
- 2 eggs
- Wash mulberries quickly, do not leave them to soak long in water or they will lose flavour
- Drain mulberries then put into a non-corrosive saucepan and turn heat to medium
- Cover and simmer gently for 10 minutes
- Blend the fruit when slightly cooled or use a potato masher to pulp it
- Place the pulp in a sieve over a bowl and work it through the sieve.
- Place the puree into the saucepan again
- Warm it gently and add the butter, ¼ cup sugar and 1 Tbsp of lemon juice
- Mix it through until all melted and taste it, adding more sugar or juice as necessary until it suits your palette
- Whisk up the eggs in a bowl and add a bit of the slightly cooled puree to it while briskly whisking (if too hot, it may cook the eggs, so I let it cool for 3 mins before mixing in)
- Meanwhile heat up the mulberry mixture on a medium/low heat
- Once the eggs and a little puree are combined, tip them into the mulberry saucepan
- Keep stirring, raise the heat and bring gently to boil
- As soon as it has thickened and covers the back of a wooden spoon, turn the heat off (this will probably occur within 5 minutes)
- Pour into sterilised jars, close with lids once cool
- Refrigerate once cold
- Will keep 10 days in fridge but I bet the jar's empty within a few days!
We found there were a few delicious accompaniments to Mulberry Butter. However, it’s probably a truer statement to say that the list is close to endless. Our current favourites are the Kefir Blinis which can be made with plain yogurt if you don’t have any kefir on hand and the other is Cinnamon Bread.
MULBERRY PIE IS A WINNER TOO
Another idea is to make a Mulberry Pie. I would add an extra egg yolk (added at the same time as the other eggs) to the Mulberry Butter recipe to make sure it sets really well in the pastry and is easy to cut. One recipe amount should fill a 9″ flan tin lined with your chosen, previously baked pastry. Left to set and then chilled, it can be served with cream or ice cream, but for us, our choice would be plain yogurt to offset the sweet mulberries.
CINNAMON TOAST IS A FABULOUS ACCOMPANIMENT
This Cinnamon Bread recipe is for those lucky enough to have a bread maker. It is a very simple recipe that has guests begging for the recipe, so I thought I would include it here today.
We served a slice of cinnamon toast, covered with a thin layer of labne and topped with Mulberry Butter. Our friends who were visiting, own a highly popular restaurant and asked for the recipe … so I feel pretty good about sharing it and hope you will enjoy it as much as they did.
- ¼ cup oil poured over the blade
- ⅓ tsp salt
- 2 heaped tsp cinnamon
- ⅓ cup sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 cup milk slightly warmed
- 3 cups bread flour
- 1¼ tsp yeast
- Put ingredients into bread maker in this order unless otherwise stated by the breadmaker manual
- Choose the white bread programme
- Remove the bread fairly soon after it is cooked so it doesn't get damp from condensation as it cools
- Cool on a rack
- Slice when cool if you can resist waiting!
- Suggestion: Toasted cinnamon bread with either labne or cream cheese thinly spread and a layer of mulberry butter spread on top. Heavenly!
I really hope you will enjoy these recipes as much as we do. They are a late Spring staple for us.
Afiyet Olsun.
Is there a way to get the mulberry butter to keep longer? Can it be shelf stored? I was thinking this would make great gifts
Unfortunately this has to be kept in the fridge and sadly has a short life span which I do not know how to expand. You could experiment with freezing some but I worry that the texture might become lumpy and unpalatable.