Probably my all-time favorite fruit is raspberries. As a kid, we had a patch in the yard where we could stroll by and get berries any time we wanted. Raspberries tend to get a little wild and spread like crazy. Of course, that makes them wonderful but they can be a bit much for a smaller yard.
Of course,w e have a smaller yard in Charleston so we were unsure whether we could have raspberries. At some point, I stopped caring whether a patch looked good or not so we planted a dozen or so starter canes and our patch was born. Actually, we started a patch of red raspberries and a patch of black raspberries and then we added another red patch. All of them have thrived and produce probably 25 pounds of berries per year.
We have made jellies and jams and syrups with them for several years, but Emily found recipes for black raspberry pie and for red raspberry muffins, both of which are to die for (yes, I said that).
We freeze a lot of the berries and use them as we need them. My word they are just like fresh and so much better than the flavorless ones that cost too much in the stores! Thank goodness for backyard raspberries!!!
By the way, here are the recipes for the pie and muffins…Emily found these somewhere on the Internet so these are not our own…
Black Raspberry pie