I think berries, and aside from simply throwing them in my yogurt, I instantly begin to think about what else they can be used for. Unfortunately, they are so small and take a fair bit of time to collect; otherwise, I believe they would be guzzled in many formats. 

Perhaps that is why God made them that way, to keep us from our gluttony. Speculation aside, they remain delicious and deserve to be used for all their worth. 

Thinking back to my morning yogurt, they bring that sweet and tart twist to a refreshing bowl of tangy dairy. While considering how well they go together, I cannot help but want to keep these two friends in the mix of whatever I concoct. 

A special treat for our breakfasts in the Hill household is muffins. We don’t normally have time to make them, and they disappear as quickly as they appear. However, they do take the flavor of a handful of berries and spread the wealth over many more bites, rather than the few fleeting swallows by themselves. Muffins I normally make include either sour cream or yogurt as well, and if you didn’t know it before, these two ingredients are more or less equal, so you can substitute one for the other. 

As I’ve mentioned before, we have a shameless addiction to the yogurt made right here at the farm by my father-in-law, so for this recipe I decided to go ahead and use some of his yogurt with our recently picked blackberries. 

Had I more time to work on this recipe, I think I would have worked in some brown sugar in place of some of the granulated sugar; however, for as many muffins as this makes, a cup of sugar still isn’t too bad. If you have pure cane sugar or would like to use brown sugar in your muffins, it’s a good way to lower the amount of refined white sugar you consume. 

While I sometimes might use honey or maple syrup to substitute for sugar, this isn’t one of those recipes where I feel it would work well, because the granules provide structure in the bake. 

Even so, while we try to limit our sugar, things like natural sugar—like that of the blackberries—don’t have the same cons as what we try to avoid. But hey, we’re making muffins not salad. 

Ooh, blackberries on a salad with vinaigrette? Now I have dinner ideas to balance the splurge.

The way out here we can use berries for breakfast, dinner and dessert. Just don’t let them get old in the fridge, considering all the effort that goes into picking them. If you really struggle with that, I have two kids and about a hundred chickens that would be happy to help you out with your surplus berries. Try to guess which of those eats them faster?