Tag Archives: Blackberry

Hardcore Hobbit: Bread and Jam

Posted on February 18, 2013 | 3 comments

I thought long and hard about this one. After all, the game makes this one just a little too easy. A ball of dough and some blackberry jam. I need a challenge! So, I made a bread specifically to match with the jam. As it says hobbits LOVE nothing better than bread and jam. I have to make it the best I can! Afterall, what says “I’m serious about bread and jam.” more than making your own bread to showcase your homemade jam? A flavour that I love to pair with blackberries is lime. I know, you would think it’s all tart enough but, I love a lot of zing in my tasty treats sometimes. Especially for something that is so perfect to serve at tea time. I could see this doing just as well with orange instead of lime though if you are looking for a milder flavour. Want to see what I did? Behold, the yogurt lime bun with blackberry jam.

workingwithjam 011

  • 1 1/2 cup of flour, divided (1 cup and 1/2 cup)
  • 1 cup probiotic fat free plain balkan style yogurt (I’m sure greek would work fine too)
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • juice of two lime wedges
  • Hardcore Hobbit blackberry jam
  1. Combine 1 cup of flour and the yogurt in a bowl. Sprinkle with sugar. Loosely cover with a damp towel and set aside in a warm place for 3 hours to proof.
  2. Add the remaining flour, baking soda, baking powder and lime juice.
  3. Lightly roll out the dough on a floured surface. Don’t push out all that air we proofed for!
  4. Using a cookie cutter or biscuit cutter, cut out 16 shapes and place on a sprayed baking sheet.
  5. Bake at 425F for 10-15 minutes.
  6. Allow to cool for a few minutes, serve warm with a 1/2 tsp of blackberry jam.

Makes 16 buns or biscuits. Each one contains 51 calories, 0.1 gram fat, 9.6. grams carbs, 0.3 gram fibre, 2.7 grams protein. Add the nutritional values for your jam and you have one pretty guilt free tasty tea time treat. Wow, a quadruple T. Win.

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Posted in Breakfast, Comfort Foods, Snack, The Hardcore Hobbit

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Hardcore Hobbit: Fruit Roll

Posted on September 27, 2011 | Leave a comment

What an exciting week! I was successful at completing the first phase of my training, so I am now a certified pilates instructor. Boldly going where no geek has gone before. Now Isengard is live on LOTRO!! Woot! I myself don’t get to play yet because all this schooling means very little gaming money right now. Can’t go running off and buying it yet. Still all this exciting stuff deserves cake…it deserves hardcore hobbit cake. In the game the fruit roll is made of honey, blackberries, and barley flour. ! It also gives that boost of will power that we all need. This to me says lemon cake with a blackberry cream cheese filling. Shall we?

  • 1 cup flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 2 large eggs
  • 3/4 cup honey or splenda
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 1 1/2 tsp grated lemon rind
  • 1 tbl fresh lemon juice
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1/4 blackberries, fresh or thawed
  • 2 tbl light strawberry cream cheese
  1. Combine the flour and baking powder in a bowl. Make a well in the centre.
  2. In another bowl combine the eggs, water, lemon rind, lemon juice, and vanilla. Mix until all one colour. Add the honey or splenda and mix until smooth.
  3. Add the liquids to the well in the flour. Add the dry around the sides of the well to the liquids until smooth.
  4. Grease a jelly roll pan very well, for extra care line with parchment paper. Pour the batter into the pan and smooth out evenly.
  5. Bake at 350F for 10-15 minutes. Check with a toothpick to make sure it is done. Immediately loosen the cake from the pan and upend onto a clean tea towel. Roll the cake gently like a jelly roll using the towel. Allow to cool.
  6. Combine the blackberries and cream cheese. I don’t get to worried about a smooth texture. I think its more fun to have little pockets of cream cheese and berry. Unroll the cake. Spread the cream cheese mixture on the cake giving about an inch of space from the edges.
  7. Roll the cake back up carefully. Slice into 16 pieces and serve!

Each slice contains (with honey) 91 calories, 1 gram fat, 19.8 gram carbs, .4 gram fibre, and 1.8 grams protein. With splenda each slice contains 43 calories, 1 gram fat, 8 grams carbs, .3 gram fibre, and 1.8 grams protein. Sure you can frost this cake but with the way that cream cheese berry filling is you really don’t need the extra calories and fat to enjoy.

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Posted in Comfort Foods, Craving Buster, Dessert, The Hardcore Hobbit

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Hardcore Hobbit: Blackberry Jam

Posted on August 31, 2011 | Leave a comment

This tasty jam can certainly be enjoyed in a variety of ways. This is an ingredient recipe in LOTRO. According to the game it is made with blackberries, water, and mixed spice. This then goes on to be the ingredient for so many other hardcore hobbit recipes. I can’t wait! I have been anxiously watching our blackberry bushes all summer. You won’t believe how busy the bees were! Now we have oodles of blackberries and the first thing that absolutely had to be made was this blackberry jam. I like the tartness of the berry so I did not add much sugar at all. If you like a sweeter jam you may want to add more than I did. With the success of this basic jam I am definitely going back to make more. I think the next will be a blackberry lavender jam and a blackberry passionfruit jam. Num! Definitely harvest season around here.

  • 4 cups crushed blackberries
  • 1 cup unsweetened apple juice (I made my own by juicing a few fuji apples)
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp ground cloves
  • 1/2 tsp light cooking margarine
  • 1 pkg no sugar needed pectin (I call it insurance in case my apple juice doesn’t come through)
  • 1 cup sweetener of choice (I used splenda but honey would be divine)
  • 4 small canning jars
  1. Boil the jars, lids, and seals to sterilize and prep for the jam. Keep them hot until ready for filling.
  2. Strain 2 or 3 cups of the berries to remove the seeds. Blend the strained liquid with the remaining crushed berries in a pot.
  3. Add the apple juice, margarine, cinnamon, and cloves to the berries.
  4. Stir in the pectin until dissolved.
  5. Bring the mixture to a boil over high heat. Add the sweetner of choice.
  6. Stir constantly while boiling for 3 minutes then remove from heat.
  7. One at a time remove jars from the hot liquid, ladle in the jam, leaving about 1/2 inch from the top. Wipe the rim clean. Top with the sealing disk. Screw down the top. Repeat for the rest of the jars.
  8. Return the filled jars to the boiling water, make sure the jars are covered by atleast an inch of water. Boil for 10 minutes or longer if you are at higher altitudes.
  9. Remove the jars from the water without tilting them. Allow to sit upright and undisturbed for 24 hours.

Makes 4 250 ml jars. 1 tbl of jam sweetened with splenda is 7 calories, .1 gram fat, .5 gram fibre, 2.1 carb, and .1 gram protein. 1 tbl of jam sweetened with honey is 22 calories, .1 gram fat, .5 gram fibre, 5.7 carbs, and .1 gram protein. Contains all the num needed to last through winter for two hungry hobbits.

 

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Posted in Breakfast, Comfort Foods, Craving Buster, Ingredient, Sidedish, Snack, The Hardcore Hobbit

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Hardcore Hobbit: Perfect Pie

Posted on June 1, 2011 | Leave a comment

In LOTRO “it may be possible to improve upon this pie, but you can’t think of how.” this pie takes blackberry pie filling and pie crust. The blackberry pie filling itself is blackberries and fresh cream. So, I had my basic ingredients outlined for me. So I thought about the types of things I love from pie. I love the creamyness and tartness of a key lime pie. I love the ultimate fruityness of a harvest pie that has whole chunks of berries and other fruit inside it. I love the ease of a cooled pie. To combine these things would be the perfect pie right? OH yes, it is indeed a great pie. It is creamy, it is fruity, it is easy! Perfection! I am also amused that all my fussing did not yield a perfect looking pie. Then I realized that my perfect pie is not a fussy looking thing, it is indeed a home cooked rustic wonder. Remember, rustic is pretty too! There are no mistakes, just rustic beauty. Anyways, enough chatter, on to this easy tasty pie!

  1. Pour the condensed milk into a bowl, add the cinnamon and stir thoroughly.
  2. Add the blackberries and carefully fold in so that they keep their shape. Crush one or two if you want the juice to marble into the milk. Do not over stir, if you want the slight marbling effect that I had. I gave it two stirs, that’s it!
  3.  Pour into the prebaked pie shell and chill in the fridge for atleast 4 hours, best if left overnight.

Serves 8. Each serving contains 240 calories, 4 grams fat, 1.4 grams fibre, 44 grams carbs, and 6.2 grams protein. This is not your everyday pie, after all if you enjoyed perfection everyday would you truly appreciate it?

psst…want a closer peek?

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Fruity Oaty Bars

Posted on March 16, 2011 | 6 comments

A friend of ours in the vampire campaign my husband is running has started a new diet called the GI diet or Glycemic Index diet. Makes me do a happy dance really since cooking for one vegetarian player and one Atkins diet player was proving troublesome. This is so much easier. So, I have learned they can eat whole grains, fruit, splenda and even low fat margarine. So easy! This week I made fruit bars…I originally called them fruit squares since they are based off my pumpkin squares recipe but it was pointed out that their rectangle nature made them dubious geometric characters if I called them that. These are nummy slightly tart treats that win with my diet choices too so hurray whole table is happy. The fibre in these makes me especially happy. Granted a certain player at the table could have gone with less fibre…you know who you are…Kaylee is still scarred from the experience. Bad Mustafa, bad. When I was thinking of what to name these I laughed so hard. They are fruity…they are oaty…and Kaylee was traumatized…what other name will do?


  • 2 cups frozen mixed berries of choice (mine contained blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries)
  • 1/2 cup splenda
  • 1 cup whole wheat flour
  • 1 cup quick cooking oats
  • 1/2 cup light margarine (you can sub with 1/4 cup egg whites for those who want to avoid margarine, it is harder to work with to make it crumbly though)
  • 1/4 tsp baking soda
  1. Combine the oats, flour, splenda and baking soda in a bowl. Add the margarine, using a fork blend until it is moist but crumbly.
  2. Defrost and cook the berries over medium low heat. If you want to thicken them add a tablespoon or two of whole wheat flour. If you like a sweeter filling add a bit of sweetener of your choice. Once the filling forms a good amount of sauce remove from heat.
  3. Place 3/4 of the oat mixture into a 9×9 glass pan. Press into the pan firmly to cover the bottom and form the crust.
  4. Pour the berry mixture on top of the crust and top with the remaining oat mixture.
  5. Bake at 350F for 30 minutes. Cool, cut into 18 bars and serve.

Makes 18 servings. Each serving contains 62 calories, 1.6 grams of fat and 1.8 grams of fibre. Let them blow your mind! Hehehe. Would this qualify as a hardcore firefly recipe then?

 

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Hardcore Hobbit: Feast of Rohan

Posted on November 22, 2010 | Leave a comment

What better way to send off your riders of rohan before battle. Really it’s just a meat and potatoes meal with a bit of flair…I have to say though my husband definitely felt fed enough to go battle some sort of orcs after this…and did….even if they were just pixels it was still a noble deed. In LOTRO the feast of rohan is made from: golden shire taters, flank of beef, and a bunch of blackberries. Like the shire rations recipe before this took some creative deconstructing. Fruit with meat is nothing new really, so why not a nice sauce with the beef….and so I did. A red wine blackberry reduction definitely does the trick.

  • 1/2 cup red wine
  • 1 cup strained blackberries (remove the seeds)
  • 2 tbl light butter
  • 4 cloves
  • 1 black cardamom
  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • 4 potatoes, cubed and boiled
  • 1 bulb garlic
  • chicken stock
  • 8 oz steak
  1. (optional) marinade the steak the night before in a bit of wine, ground pepper, and blackberry juice.
  2. Cut the top off of the garlic bulb, spritz with cooking spray, wrap with foil. Bake at 400F for 30 minutes.
  3. Cook the steak to desired temp.
  4. Pour red wine into a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and reduce by half. Add the blackberries, cloves, cardamom, sugar and cinnamon. Reduce again until it begins to thicken. Remove the cloves and cardamom. Add the butter, stirring constantly to thicken the sauce.
  5. Mash the potatoes using the chicken stock to get the desired smoothness. Squeeze the garlic bulb into the potatoes and continue to mash. Salt and pepper as needed.
  6. Slice the steak thinly and cover with some of the sauce. Serve with garlic mashed potatoes on the side.

Serves two riders of rohan….or just one rider and his wife who won’t be told to stay home and will dress as a man and totally kick some butt. Each serving contains 403 calories, 14.9 grams of fat and 5.8 grams of fibre. Which really isn’t bad at all for a steak dinner. Excellent with cooked carrots as a side dish for those that need a little extra vitality before battle.

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Hardcore Hobbit Blackberry Tart

Posted on September 6, 2010 | Leave a comment

Blackberries are in season! I’ve been waiting a long to do this hardcore hobbit project recipe. We have blackberries that grow just about everywhere around here. It’s not unusual to see folks pulled over on the side of the road picking blackberries. We even have some that have taken over the one side of our fence. We love them. So I picked some this evening and made ourselves a lovely round of tarts that would hopefully make any hobbit proud. In the game blackberry tarts are made of several tiers of items. First it takes a pie crust, which we covered earlier: Pie Crust recipe then it takes blackberry pie filling. According to the game blackberry pie filling takes: blackberries and fresh cream. All told this is how the recipe reads in game for the tart itself: blackberry pie filling, barley flour, fresh cream, and water. *phew* Clear as mud? Good. Hehe. Well, I had a couple of ideas on how to make this work. One is what I feel is the truest version and the other is the healthier version. Both are nummy. Since our focus here is health I will give the healthier version first and then write a note after on what to substitute for the other version.

  • 1 pint blackberries
  • 1 tbl honey
  • 1 tbl flour
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 2 tbl low fat vanilla yogurt
  • 9 hardcore hobbit pie crust tart shells
  • 1 pkg fat free vanilla pudding mix
  • 2 cups milk
  1. If you prefer you pie filling without seeds strain your blackberries, if you are more rustic skip this.
  2. Place the blackberries, honey, vanilla, and flour in a saucepan. Heat on low. Simmer until the blackberries break down and thicken. About 10 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the yogurt (this is our cream replacement).
  3. Whisk together the pudding mix and milk. Spoon the pudding into the tart shells until the are half full. You will most likely use only half of the pudding. Save the remaining pudding for another day, that’s what I’m doing. Allow to sit 5 minutes.
  4. Spoon the pie filling into the tart shells to top them up. Enjoy!

This makes 9 tarts. Each tart is 113 calories, 3.4 grams of fat and .8 grams of fibre. Very tasty! Want to know about my other tart? Alright: Prepare the filling as directed. Instead of pudding and milk use creme fraiche, isn’t that cute? It is still fresh cream riiight? Combine the creme fraiche with 2 tbl of clover honey. You can use this as an underlayer as I did with the pudding or as a topping for the pie filling. Both are beautiful to plate and delicious to taste! I know the hobbits around here love these tarts done either way. It just depends on if those hobbits want to fit into their cloaks at the end of the day or not 😉

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