Birdberry Cake

• Dakota’s tribe favourite dessert, Birdberry cake, was produced by grinding the entire birdberry fruit, including the seeds (exactly as we do!), mixing it with corn and animal fat and making cakes out of the mass.
• Native Americans used the extracts of birdberry to treat common health problems like colds, sore throats, coughs to aid digestion and more surprisingly… to induce childbirth.
• Birdberry has esoteric roots too! It was used as the fuel source for the altar fire at peyote ceremonies, prayer ceremonies that utilized the hallucinogenic peyote cactus.
• Birdberry (also called sugarberry, beaverwood and nettletree) fruits have rich vitamin content and provide long lasting energy when consumed. Historically they often served as a food source for explorers during their long treks towards the west.
• Scientists in Egypt found that birdberry leaves contain significant antioxidant and cytotoxic properties that are known remedies against aging and cancer prevention.
• Most famous mention of birdberry appears to be in Homer’s The Odyssey, where famed “lotus fruits” lured Odysseus’s team away from their homelands.

Read less