Last Sunday we held our first mushroom day course of the year. The group learnt to identify the important fungi features that make accurate identification possible. We found a wide variety of fungi – not to mention the 10 different edibles that Chris cooked up for people to taste.

Our Blackberry Whisky recipe is below, if you can still find a few this is a great tipple to fill your hip flask.

 Blackberry Whisky

• 70cl blended Whisky,
• 330g blackberries
• 100g sugar

Wash the blackberries and put them into a large bottle or jar. Add the whisky and sugar. Shake or stir to dissolve the sugar and leave in a dark place for a month. Once a week stir or shake the whisky to help extract the flavour from the fruit. After a month taste the whisky to check for flavour and sweetness.

The flavour of your blackberry whisky will vary from year to year as the fruit varies. You can easily sweeten the liqueur by stirring in some caster sugar. If there is not enough blackberry flavour add some frozen berries and leave for another week or two. When you ready to bottle the whisky remove the blackberries and strain the whisky through a very fine mesh sieve or muslin.

Don’t throw away the blackberries they are gorgeous mixed with cooking apples in a crumble or in cakes or winter trifles.