Blackberry Dumplings

My cousin texted me last June asking if I remembered “those berry things with the dough chunks” our grandma used to make. I had no idea what she was talking about until she sent me a blurry photo of an old recipe card.

Turned out to be this wild Missouri dessert where you cook pastry pieces directly in boiling blackberry juice. Not baked. Not fried. Just simmered in berry soup until they’re soft and soaked through with flavor.

Tried it and holy crap, it’s good. Like if fruit dumplings and berry pie had a baby.

What Even Is This

It’s not cobbler. Cobbler has the fruit on the bottom and topping on top, baked in the oven.

This is more like… berry stew with dumplings? You simmer blackberries with sugar until they break down into thick sauce, then drop pieces of pastry dough right into the bubbling pot. They cook in all that sweet berry liquid and soak up the flavor.

The texture’s somewhere between a dumpling and a noodle. Soft on the outside, slightly chewy in the middle, purple from all that berry juice.

Apparently this was a thing poor families made back in the day. Cheaper than making cobbler because you don’t need to heat up the oven in summer. Feeds more people because the dumplings bulk it up.

Getting Your Berries

You need four cups of blackberries. That’s a quart if you’re buying them fresh.

Wild blackberries are best if you can find them. They’re smaller and more tart than store-bought. Problem is, blackberry bushes are thorny as hell. Wear long sleeves and thick pants if you’re picking them yourself.

Store berries work totally fine. Just expensive. Frozen’s cheaper – Costco has big bags. Use them straight from frozen, they’ll break down as they cook.

Taste your berries before you start. Super sour ones need more sugar. Sweet ones need less. The recipe says two cups but you might want to adjust.

What Goes In

Berry part:

• 4 cups blackberries
• 2 cups sugar (start with 1½ if your berries are sweet)
• 2 cups water
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

Dumpling part:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup shortening (the Crisco stuff)
• 1 egg yolk
• About 5 tablespoons milk

How to Make This Thing

Grab your biggest pot. Put in the blackberries, sugar, water, butter, and cinnamon.

Set it on the stove over medium-low heat. Let it cook for maybe 20-30 minutes, stirring it every few minutes. The berries will start falling apart and the liquid gets thick and syrupy. You want it to look less like berries in water and more like berry sauce.

While that’s happening, make your dough.

Mix the flour and salt in a bowl. Drop in the shortening and use two knives or a pastry cutter thing to chop it up until you’ve got pea-sized crumbs. If you don’t have a pastry cutter, just use two forks. Works fine.

Mix in the egg yolk.

Now add the milk slowly – one spoon at a time. Mix it with a fork after each spoonful. You’re trying to get to the point where you can grab a handful of the mixture and squeeze it into a ball. Too much milk and it turns into sticky mess. Not enough and it stays crumbly.

When it holds together, stop adding milk. Split the dough into two pieces.

Flour your counter and roll out one piece until it’s about as thick as pie crust – quarter inch or so.

Take a knife and cut it into strips. About 2-3 inches wide, doesn’t matter if they’re perfect.

By now your berry mixture should be bubbling. Hold a strip of dough over the pot and just pinch off chunks about as long as your finger. Let them drop into the bubbling berries. Keep doing this until all the dough’s in there.

Turn the heat down to regular medium. Let it all cook for 15 minutes. Here’s the weird part – you cannot stir it. I know you want to. Don’t. If you stir, the dumplings fall apart and turn into paste. You can gently push them down into the liquid with a spoon, but that’s it.

After 15 minutes, pull it off the heat. The dumplings should be cooked through and the berry juice should be thick.

Things I Messed Up So You Don’t Have To

First time I made this, I stirred it. Big mistake. Ended up with purple goop instead of actual dumplings. Just leave it alone.

Used all the milk at once. Another mistake. The dough was so wet I couldn’t work with it. Add it gradually.

Tried to roll the dough too thin. It fell apart when I tried to drop it in the pot. Keep it quarter-inch thick, not thinner.

Didn’t let it cool before eating. Burned the roof of my mouth. That berry juice stays nuclear hot for a while. Give it ten minutes.

Cooked it on high heat. The berries scorched on the bottom before they broke down. Medium-low is the way.

How People Eat It

Serve it in bowls. It’s more of a soupy situation than a slice-and-serve dessert.

My grandma’s generation poured canned evaporated milk over the top. Weird but actually tastes good – makes it creamy and cuts the sweetness.

Ice cream on the side is obvious but works great. The hot dumplings melt the ice cream and everything combines.

Some folks dust powdered sugar on top. Looks nicer for company.

I eat it straight with nothing added because I’m lazy and it’s already perfect.

Other Berry Options

Haven’t personally tried it but people say mixed berries work. Half blackberries, half raspberries or blueberries. You’d probably use less sugar since it wouldn’t be as tart.

Could maybe do it with cherries? Peaches? Don’t know, haven’t tested it. If you try it, let the fruit cook longer if it’s firmer than blackberries.

Why Make This

Honestly? Because it’s different. When’s the last time you ate something you’d never had before?

Also it’s stupid easy. If you can boil water and mix flour, you can make this. No mixer, no oven, just one pot on the stove.

Tastes like old-fashioned comfort food. The kind of thing someone’s grandma made that nobody makes anymore.

My cousin brought some to her book club and apparently three different people asked for the recipe. One of them said her mom used to make it in Kentucky in the sixties.

It’s that kind of recipe – people either have never heard of it or it hits them with nostalgia they didn’t know they had.

The Practical Side

Leftovers keep in the fridge for a few days. Reheat gently on the stove or in the microwave.

The dumplings soak up more juice as they sit, so it gets thicker. Just add a splash of water when you reheat if it’s too dense.

Makes enough to feed 10-12 people as dessert. Or four people if you’re really into it.

Not the prettiest dessert you’ll ever make. It’s purple and lumpy and looks kind of like what would happen if berries and dumplings got in a fight. But it tastes way better than it looks.