Colm O'Gorman's autumn apple and blackberry crumble with hazelnuts and Irish whiskey cream

Irish hedgerows are generally full of brambles, so if you have some near you, go grab your berries

'The combination of apple, blackberries, caramel, and hazelnuts is fabulous.'

Autumn was the time to pick wild fruit when I was little. Crab-apples, not to eat, of course, but for homemade crab-apple jelly, and maybe some wild rosehips. Blackberries were my favourite wild autumn bounty though. Plump, sweet and delicious, I could eat those straight off the bramble by the handful. A few of us siblings would go out to pick them, and after having our fill, we would return home with full buckets that my mother would then use to make jam or maybe an apple and blackberry tart.

Wild blackberries usually come into season here in late August or early September, but they have taken longer to ripen this year, perhaps because we have had a drier summer than usual. The fruit are smaller than usual for certain, but still full of flavour.