It's raspberry season again. This year when my friend gave me a bunch of her black raspberries (we actually grow some raspberries ourselves, but end up eating them all off the brambles, so it's good to have friends), I decided to revisit these delicious raspberry bars, only this time I wanted to make them without seeds. I don't mind seeds, but sometimes little or picky mouths do.
I'm not going to lie. It wasn't just as easy to take the seeds out. But it really wasn't that bad. It took me about 10 minutes, or about the time the bottom crust takes to bake. This was worth it to me to have people not complain about seeds. (Also, you can use the seeds to make a pretty pink raspberry lemonade. But I'll get to that in a minute..)
Here's what I did to de-seed the raspberries:
1. Give them a quick blend in the blender, just enough to mash them. This might not work if you have a super powerful blender like BlendTec or Vitamix because they will pulverize your seeds (of course, if they're pulverized, them maybe your problem is solved--you can have your seeds and, um, eat them too). I just gave mine a couple pulses in my crappy blender and things were smashed.
2. Mash them through a strainer.
This takes a few minutes and a wee bit of elbow grease. It's why people without picky kids aren't as muscular as the rest of us (ha, just a little joke there to make myself feel better--you guys are probably strong too). You'll just press and press until what you've got left is a bunch of seeds that can be mashed together into a sort of ball.
(wow, do you think that counter could get any cleaner?)
If it doesn't hold together in a ball, keep pressing because there's more juice and pulp and yummy stuff yet to be gotten.
3. Set the ball of seeds aside (for the lemonade, remember) and proceed with the recipe with your now lovely smooth raspberry sauce.
4. If you wish to make pink raspberry lemonade, mix the seeds with 1 C lemon juice. Shake or mix it up until it's a nice pretty color. Then strain those seeds out one more time. You'll be left with a pink lemon juice. Add 1 C sugar and 4 C cold water. Mix until sugar dissolves and drink up. Or make into popsicles. We did both. (But I somehow erased the pictures...)
Those sound amazing :) My kids (and I, I won't lie) are very picky and I can't stand seeds in anything except Rye bread (and that's pushing it). Also, have you tried making a simple syrup to mix into your lemonade instead of just adding the sugar to the cold water? It blends in so much better and doesn't end up sinking to the bottom or require endless remixing. Just a thought. I plan on trying both. :)
ReplyDeleteSometimes I make the laziest simple sugar ever by putting the lemon juice and water in the fridge for a while until I need to use it, but I don't ever cook a syrup for it. I will say though that when we make lemonade, it only takes a minute or less to get that sugar mixed in. Maybe it's the acid from the lemon or something, but it's usually not a problem for us.
DeleteAlso, I'm impressed that your kids will eat rye bread. Picky, pshaw:).
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