The sweeter the juice: an entirely ripened mulberry is the flavour of self-control

Mention mulberries to any Australian adult – or anyone for that matter who lives in a country where they grow – and I can almost guarantee you that eyes shine and corners of mouths twitch upwards.

Whose childhood didn’t involve deep magenta-stained hands, faces, and clothes streaked with crimson juice, which we all pretended was blood? Especially as they are at fully glory come Halloween. What could make a better costume than mulberry blood?

Every primal instinct we have compels us to gorge on these squishy swollen berries, often more tart than sweet, as who had the patience to wait for the whole berry to darken?

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Not I (I was keen and greedy), and after the few truly ripe ones (the ones the birds had kindly left behind) were gobbled up, I honed in on the ones that still had a tinge of pink and green on them. Tart and slightly crunchy, they didn’t taste very good. But still, that was hardly the point.

As an adult, I am mastering the art of waiting. The berries that yield easily into your waiting hand, with just a slight tickle to the stem, are reliably the only ones that will be luscious. An entirely ripened mulberry is the flavour of self-control.

Where I grew in Sydney, they arrived at roughly the same time wild freesias were peaking, popping up along the along the grassy verges, perfuming the neighbourhood with sweet pepper. While it is rarer to find the wild freesias now around Sydney suburban neighbourhoods, the mulberry trees are still evident and very easy to identify. As a child I made a mental map of the ones with the sweetest fruit, a trail I meandered with my dog every spring afternoon. One for me, one for you. He loved mulberries as much as I did.

The heart-shaped, lime green leaves (some are jagged) declare themselves before the arrival of the berries; left unpruned, the crown of trees gets lush and bolts with new wood yearly.

They can be trained into a bush or a shade tree. Though if you are growing them for berries, pruning them when they shed their last leaves, but long after they’ve finished fruiting, is the key.

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The rewards for your cutback efforts are not only the wood – gifted to neighbours and friends, so that they can be propagated to start off new trees – but also a largesse of plump, easy-to-pick berries the following year. They can take a hard pruning as their berries grow on new wood, and sometimes the spurs of old wood, depending on the variety.

Talking about variety, growing up we had the standard black varieties. There are a few different variations, but they are of more or less similar quality – the taste of the berries has much to do with how the trees are pruned and soil health.

The lesser-seen cultivars are the morus alba, a white variety which ripens to have a lovely violet blush and the red and white shahtoot, with curious-looking, long and narrow fruit that reminds me of Haribo worm candies but tastes a whole better. Being extremely adaptable, no doubt they have hybridised to suit certain climates.

Mulberries are not a commercial fruit as they have a volatile nature. Being almost 90% water, they are susceptible to going to mouldy if they are picked ripe.

They are however a perfect garden tree; I have planted several around my garden in the city, ensuring that the local wildlife is satiated while having a few leftover for my family. I’ve even planted them over the Cock Block – our little chicken coop. During mulberry season the eggs are especially delicious.

Their commercial value is in the leaves, which are harvested to feed silkworms. Dried mulberry leaves also make an excellent tea for humans. It has a pleasant, sweet flavour and is loaded with antioxidants and minerals. Even if you dislike the fruit (do these people even exist?) they are a still a valuable tree to have in your garden. Since they’re fast-growing, they contribute a good deal of biomass – their leaves and old branches make excellent leaf litter and mulch for the rest of your garden. Not to mention, they are an exceptionally beautiful tree to gaze upon, and require very little human attendance.

Further to their easeful nature, they are easily propagated on softwood, semi-hardwood and hardwood cuttings. Though there is timing to that: don’t try to strike them when they are fruiting, the best time is when they are heading towards dormancy.

Seeing how the mulberries and the eggs are being harvested close together in our garden over the chook pen, the ones that don’t get eaten fresh make a very lovely, rustic clafoutis, which is in essence a simple, baked custard-ish crepe with fruit. It requires no mixer and can be made very easily by hand. Though clafoutis is traditionally made with stone fruits such as cherries, this is a good way to use up mulberries that are not at their peak ripeness.

Mulberry clafoutis

Serves 8

Butter (to grease a shallow 2L baking pan/pie dish/cake tin, whatever you have at hand)
600g mulberries
½ cup cake flour
3 large eggs
1 extra yolk
1 scraped vanilla pod or 1 tsp vanilla extract
3 drops of lemon oil
⅓ cup raw castor sugar
170ml full-fat milk
170ml full-fat cream
2 tbsp granulated brown sugar

Turn your oven on to 190°C. Generously grease the pan and place the mulberries evenly in the dish. Set aside.

Sift the flour; into a mixing bowl add all the other ingredients and whisk until everything looks well blended and incorporated.

Pour into the baking dish over the mulberries. I like to sprinkle with a little extra granulated brown sugar on top, before popping into the oven, but you can easily also dust with icing sugar at the end if that is your preference.

Bake for 45 minutes until the custard is set, but has a slight wobble.

Serve hot – although it will be just as delicious cold.