Berry Picking
(and Lemon Cake)

When I was a child growing up in California, my neighbor owned one of the most fascinating, frustrating and dangerous attractions on our street: a raspberry bush. Dr. Wallace was a retired dentist, a widower who lived in a big, white colonial house with a swimming pool in the back yard and an untended orchard beyond that. All the houses on Pepper Lane shared a long swath of orchard filled with Italian plum trees, apricot trees, walnut trees, persimmon trees, and apple trees with small sour apples.

The orchard had originally been a part of the Glen Una Ranch, one of the many fruit ranches that once spread across the incredibly fertile soil of the Santa Clara Valley. That soil, time has proved, is also incredibly fertile for development, and the orchards that have been preserved are markers of eccentric passion in the midst of a traffic jam.

I was lucky enough to grow up on a remnant of that agricultural dream, but, as far as I know, Dr. Wallace was the only resident of Pepper Lane who had a raspberry bush in his pocket of orchard. And what a bush it was—enormously rambling like some absent-minded theologian whose occasional illuminations must have tasted to the intellect like the fruit of the gods.

In early summer, the bush frothed with the delicate white blooms. They tumbled from the source on arching canes of thorns and so covered the bush that it looked almost pillowy. Deceptively so, I might add.

As the petals fell away from the core and the small hard green fruit emerged, summer moved through the orchard. We picked the dusty purple plums, which we called prune plums, and Pedro, the burro who lived in our piece of orchard, ate the tart apples on the lowest branches of the apple trees. By high summer, the raspberries began their furious blush through the brambles, and we children began to try to figure out how to pick them.

It seemed they never grew on the outer canes—or maybe the birds ate them before we could reach them. But in the center of that massive work of thorns, far beyond the reach of our short arms, there nested baskets of the cobbled red berries.

Always a slave to good food, I tried. I knew what the berries tasted like. I could usually reach a few on the outskirts of temptation, and I can remember a warm day chilling to dusk, my fingers stained red with the tart sweetness of a few berries, and me, crouching at the base of the bramble, my arms covered in scratches as red as the fruit, looking for a way in.

I never found one, and I never ate enough of Dr. Wallace’s raspberries to fill a basket, but I came to view berries that grow on thorned vines as treasures, jewel-like and transcendent. Precious. Very, very precious.

So you can imagine my enthusiasm when I discovered Jack and Pat Dougherty Bella Vista Ranch where you can walk through rows and rows of politely yielding blackberry bushes and fill carton after plastic carton with the fruit. Jack and Pat say the blackberries and vegetables are nice enough, but their true love lies with the olive trees Jack has planted. I say olives are nice, and so is olive oil, but I love the berries.

I like to go on Mother’s Day and fill a flat with blackberries, but Pat says this year the berries are coming in later—more toward the middle of May. Late or not, they’re coming in profusion. The vines are laden, she says, heavy with green fruit, and all of it, just there for the picking. It’s almost too easy, and, unlike Dr. Wallace’s raspberries, it’s not free. But also, unlike Dr. Wallace’s raspberries, it’s accessible, and that sun-warmed fruit, paired with sweet lemon cream and cake beats any longing through the tangled brambles of memory.

1 box lemon cake

½ cup sugar

1 cup apricot nectar

¾ c. Wesson oil

4 eggs

Mix on medium speed. Grease and flour bundt pan. Bake 1 hour at 325. While hot (take out of pan) make holes w/knife and pour the glaze over it.

Glaze

2 c. powdered sugar

juice of 4 lemons

Lemon Curd

1 cup sugar

6 large egg yolks, lightly beaten

½ cup lemon juice

½ cup butter at room temperature

1 Tablespoon grated lemon peel

Combine sugar and eggs in a sauce pan and gradually stir in lemon juice. Cook, stirring constantly, over low heat until mixture coats the back of a spoon and registers 168 degrees on a candy thermometer. Don’t let it boil! Stir in the grated lemon peel.

Whip some heavy cream to soft peaks and fold in lemon curd. Use your judgment and taste on this. More lemon, less lemon—it’s up to you. (You can also buy lemon curd at specialty stores.) Mix fresh berries—blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries—with sugar and let stand 20 minutes. Spoon cream over a slice of cake and top with berries. For a fancy presentation (I call it lemon trifle), layer cake sprinkled with Bacardi Limon, berries and cream in a wine glass. Rich. Decadent. Wonderful.

Enjoy!