The next time you have blackberries on hand, please make this recipe. It doesn’t lake long, and you are left with enough sweet & spicy, chile-infused blackberry syrup to keep your taste buds tingling for a good stretch. I clipped the recipe out of an issue of Gourmet Magazine years ago, September 2007, and enjoy it every year when berries are in season.
Blackberry Syrup: The Recipe
Over the years I’ve made this syrup experimenting with a range of chiles. Play around! Broadly speaking, it’s easy to adjust the spiciness to your liking. My advice is to make notes so you know your preference for future batches.
A Special Syrup: How To Use It
The ways to enjoy this syrup are endless.
- Use it to spritz up sparkling water.
- Swirl it into yogurt, oatmeal, or crème fraîche.
- Slather on buttered toast or skillet cornbread.
- Drizzle over goat cheese.
- Use as a topping for pancakes, crepes, or waffles.
- Jazz up tapioca pudding.
Use it in Cocktails
Gourmet highlighted their original version of this blackberry syrup alongside a bourbon-based cocktail (it was a Briar Patch), and a version of a Desert Sunrise. If you think of it as a homemade spicy grenadine, you can imagine all sorts of cocktail applications (and non-alcoholic cocktails as well). 
Even More Ideas
I keep thinking about working this syrup into a cheesecake. You know how Humboldt Fog goat cheese has a thin layer of vegetable ash running through it? What if, using that as inspiration, you had a thin vein of the chile blackberry syrup run through the cream cheese filling. You’d only see it after slicing into the cake? Or you could use it in a simple vinaigrette, or as part of a fruit salad. There are a lot of other ideas down in the comments, and I’ll put a few highlights in the next section.
Blackberry Syrup: How *You’re* Using It
You’ve shared so many great ideas over the years in the comments. A few favorites:
- Payel says, “it is great on top of strawberry ice cream, with french toast or with chilled white wine to make kirs.”
- Kate dovetails with this sentiment saying this syrup was amazing over vanilla bean ice cream topped with roasted pecans.
- On the savory front FCnoted, “I used this smoky syrup in a marinate to prepare tempeh peach kebabs.”
- Sharon suggested a bruschetta with a slice of chevre blanc, grilled with a drizzle of this and maybe a sprig of rocket.
Lastly, you’ll have enough to gift some syrup to friends. You can print up little tags with recipe suggestions for a thank-you or housewarming treat. Enjoy!
More Berry Recipes
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