Ingredient: Raspberries

There is huge excitement in our house when our little patch of raspberries comes to life in our garden, with juicy goodies popping up like little beacons of crimson joy all summer and autumn… as long as we can get to them before the birds! I’m equally as thrilled to find cardboard punnets in local farmers’ markets and try and use them in as many recipes as I can.

Wild raspberries have been eaten by humans for thousands of years. They began to be cultivated in England, in the thirteenth century. Nowadays you can find raspberries all year round and luckily, the frozen ones are just as nutritious as the fresh.

Raspberries are incredibly versatile and can be used in a variety of ways to add both a sweet and a tart flavour to your favourite dishes. Kids love to pop them on their fingers like puppets. Like nature’s sweets they offer a healthy mouthful of yumminess, almost impossible not to gobble up before using in a cake or flapjack recipe.

Full of vitamin C and polyphenols, they add essential nutrients and flavour to smoothies, crumbles and jellies! We often top yoghurt and oats with them too. In fact there aren’t many breakfasts where a scattering of raspberries wouldn’t go amiss.