These cardamom berry oatmeal crumble bars might be my new go-to for casual summer potlucks. They’re sweet and chewy, but they’ve got a little spice from the cardamom, and some whole wheat flour to make them a bit hearty. Plus, the berries mean they just taste like summer.

These are made with raspberries and blackberries, but you could use all of one berry type or the other. Or go nuts and use marionberries, loganberries, or black raspberries. Yeah, those are all real berries that grow here in Oregon. We have more weird berry types than you can shake a stick at.

My original plan was to make these bars with all raspberries, until I realized right before I started baking that I needed a lot more berries than I’d bought. But then I remembered that blackberries are in season here, and in the Pacific Northwest, they grow like weeds. I’m not kidding–the non-native invasive blackberries are constantly trying to take over. Including in the alley behind my house, where they grow prolifically between the back fences and the street. So I did some urban foraging, and picked a couple of cups of alley berries.

“Alley berries–better than they sound!” That’s my new ad campaign slogan for urban foraged blackberries. They’re going to blow up any day now, I swear.

Picking the berries probably took the same amount of time it would’ve to go to the store and buy them, but it was free, plus I felt like I was doing my part to help prevent the spread of invasive weeds–fewer berries for the birds means fewer seeds. Plus, urban foraging just sounds cool, doesn’t it? Maybe next year I’ll make these with raspberries from my yard, too (who am I kidding–they’d never make it into a bar, because I eat them all straight from the bush).

If you don’t have homegrown berries, or even fresh berries, don’t worry, you can still make these berry oatmeal crumble bars. I don’t see any reason why this recipe wouldn’t work with frozen raspberries or blackberries.