I grew up in New York City. My back yard was the hard gray pavement. Most of my childhood games were played on the sidewalk, games such as hopscotch, jump rope and stick ball. Every summer though my family would go on vacation and we would spend two glorious weeks away from the city. We would drive up to the Adirondack Mountains and stay at a cabin on Loon Lake. Much like Dorothy, my world went from Black and White to Technicolor. The cabin was in a wooded area just a short walk from the lake. The surrounding woods were filled with little paths to other cabins. Every afternoon I would take a long walks along the paths.  The woods were filled with blackberries, raspberries and blueberries. I would fill my pail each afternoon and return to the cabin. Many days I would return from my walk and my sisters and I would just eat the berries straight from the pail, too impatient to make them into a dessert. But on those few days that we controlled our impulses to eat those berries immediately we would stand at mom’s side and make a dessert.  We kept our desserts pretty simple: pies, cobblers and crisps. The blackberries almost never lasted until the morning so I bought enough recently so that I could make this delicious coffee cake, it’s moist and slightly sweet bursting with blackberries. Even better is how easy it is to make. Picking and cooking with blackberries were some of the happiest and most delicious moments of my life.