One of my fondest childhood memories is of the summers spent picking blackberries near my great grandparents’ farm in Kentucky. My cousins and I whiled away afternoons trying to see who could cram the most berries into our little pails while doing our best to avoid the dreaded bramble. We’d enviably arrive back at the house with our fingers bloodied and our mouths stained purple from all the berries we’d filched. There we’d begrudgingly hand over the remaining contents of our pails to my grandmother who would set to work making a blackberry cobbler for later in the day. It was a novelty and a delight for a city kid like me.

My husband has an equally treasured (albeit less charmingly nostalgic) berry-picking memory that occurred during his college years, when he and his best pal Steve embarked on a cross-country road trip armed with the meager foodstuffs that selling their books afforded (think a few cans of beanie weenies and some peanut butter sandwiches.) Needless to say, given the price paid for used liberal arts textbooks, they ate all their provisions in the first few hours of their three-day journey. Their salvation came in the discovery of a pick-your-own strawberry patch during hour seven of their trip, where for the bargain price of 38 cents per two gallon bucket, they could pick as many strawberries as they wanted. Stomachs growling fiercely, they proceeded to fill the entire hatchback of Steve’s little Nissan with the luscious red fruit. Hunger crisis averted.

Fast forward. Like all striving modern-day parents, I’m itching to create such memories outside the daily routine with my own two girls, and berry picking fits the bill nicely (they’re both crazy for berries; my older daughter likes to say she was “cooked on strawberries” due to the fact that I ate them endlessly while I was pregnant with her). While I no longer have the luxury of grandparents who own a berry-frocked farm, there are a number of places reasonably close to Dallas that offer the chance to feed the harvest-jones. Prime berry-picking season is May – June, but there is an abundance of late summer delights including tomatoes, peaches, summer squash and more still to come.

For a good list of what’s available to pick nearby, take a peek at Pick Your Own. Many of the farms listed are following organic practices, though not all are seeking certification. And at Blueberry Hills Farm in Edom (76 miles east of Dallas), you can still pick berries through this Sunday. If you’re up for little jaunt with minimal planning, this just might be the ticket.

And, if you do make it out to Edom and come home with baskets overflowing with blueberries, I’d highly recommend this simple cake topped with a smear of lemon curd and a handful of slightly crushed berries. That is if you don’t eat them all on the ride home.

Alice Water’s 1234 Cake with Lemon Curd and Blueberries

Adapted from “The Art of Simple Food” by Alice Waters

Yield One nine-inch, two-layer cake

Ingredients
• 4 eggs, separated
• 1 cup milk
• 3 cups cake flour (sift and then measure)
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsweetened butter, softened
• 2 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter two 9-inch baking pans and line the bottom of each with parchment paper. Butter the paper and dust the pans with flour, tapping out the excess.

Stir baking powder and salt into cake flour.

In another bowl, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the four egg yolks one at a time. Add the vanilla to the mixture.

Add the flour mixture and milk alternately, starting and ending with one third of the flour. Stir just until the flour is incorporated.

In another bowl, whisk egg whites to soft peaks. Stir one third of the egg whites into the batter, then gently fold in the rest.

Pour the batter into the prepared pans and bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 30 to 40 minutes.

Let cake cool and then spread lemon curd between the two layers. Serve with slightly crushed fresh, local blueberries and loosely whipped cream.