What is cobbler?
This is what Wiki says : Cobbler refers to a variety of dishes, particularly in the United States, Ireland and United Kingdom, consisting of a fruit or savoury filling poured into a large baking dish and covered with a batter, biscuit, or pie crust before being baked. Unlike a pie, cobbler never contains a bottom crust.
Cobblers originated in the early British American colonies. English settlers were unable to make traditional suet puddings due to lack of suitable ingredients and cooking equipment, so instead covered a stewed filling with a layer of uncooked plain biscuits or dumplings, fitted together. When fully cooked, the surface has the appearance of a cobbled street. The name may also derive from the fact that the ingredients are "cobbled" together.
In the United States, varieties of cobbler include the Betty, the Grunt, the Slump, the Buckle, and the Sonker. The Crisp or Crumble differ from the cobbler in that their top layers are generally made with oatmeal. Grunts, Pandowdy, and Slumps are a New England variety of cobbler, typically cooked on the stove-top or cooked in an iron skillet or pan with the dough on top in the shape of dumplings—they reportedly take their name from the grunting sound they make while cooking. A Buckle is made with yellow batter (like cake batter), with the filling mixed in with the batter. Apple pan dowdy is an apple cobbler whose crust has been broken and perhaps stirred back into the filling. The Sonker is unique to North Carolina: it is a deep-dish version of the American cobbler. In the Deep South, cobblers most commonly come in single fruit varieties and are named as such, such as blackberry, blueberry, and peach cobbler. The Deep South tradition also gives the option of topping the fruit cobbler with a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream.
I had a lot of strawberries in the fridge, bought on a sale at Whole Foods, and wanted to make something sweet and simple. I have been organizing and cleaning our home the whole day, and didn't want to get into any complicated recipes, as it was already past 10 PM. I never made a cobbler before, but thinking of deserts made with fresh fruit, this came to mind. I thought it must be easy to make, and looked up some recipes on the Internet. There are many different ones, all with various ingredients, and could not decide on one. So I just made whatever felt right, by ear.
This is how I made 4 ramekins of cobbler:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F ( 180 C ).
Wash and cut the strawberries in quarters and put them in a sauce pan. Added some frozen blueberries I remembered I had in the freezer. I always keep frozen berries for milkshakes. You can make any combination of fruit you like. You can also add apple, peach, banana, orange, apricot... any combination that seems yummy to you, try. I had about 3 cups of fruit.
In a small bowl mix 1/4 cups of sugar with 1 tablespoon corn starch and add on top of the fruit, with 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract. The corn starch is easy to find at any grocery store, and its role is to make the juice of the fruit a little thicker.
Mix everything a little, and place the pan on medium heat, until it starts to bubble and all the sugar has melted.
While the berries are on the stove, start making the dough.
I used my stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment for this step. But just because I was lazy; you can do it faster by hand using a dough cutter or even a fork. In the bowl of the mixer put 1 1/2 cup of flour, 1/4 cup of sugar (brown sugar would be better I think, but I only had normal sugar on hand) 1 tablespoon baking powder, a pinch of salt and mix on low speed. While it mixes on low add 1/4 cup of heavy cream. You can substitute this with sour cream or yogurt, creme fraiche, or even skip this step. I like to add something like this in the doughs I make, because it gives them extra richness and fluffiness. Add 6 tablespoons ( 80 grams ) of very cold butter, previously cut in small cubes. Mix everything on low for just 1 minute or so, until you get a crumbly dough like this:
The best part of making this dish, is that you don't need to precisely measure the ingredients, it does not really matter. If the dough looks too dry add a little cream or butter. If it is to liquid add flour. No problem. Just don't overwork the dough, because the butter will melt, and you don't want that.
To put everything together, get 4 ramekins, or a bigger and deep dish, a pie dish, a Pyrex dish, or whatever you have on hand, that can go in the oven. Pour the fruit mixture on the bottom, and add some dough on top.
You also can have different ratios of fruit to dough as well, depending on your preference. I like it to have it 1:1 just because I am obsessed with symmetry. So that each spoonful of cobbler gets the perfect amount of fruit and dough. :)
But if you like fruits more, you can put just a little dough on a lot of fruits. In this case, would be very pretty to make the dough in a ball, roll it with the rolling pin in a thick sheet, and using cookie cutters cut shapes of dough, like stars, hearts, squares, whatever you fancy, in different sizes, and place them on top of the fruit mixture. I wanted to do so but my laziness didn't let me. I just put a dollop of dough using an ice cream scoop, in each ramekin filled with fruit. Like this:
Bake this babies for 30-40 minutes. They are done when the dough puffed up and is golden, and the fruit is bubbling.
Let them rest for 15 minutes before serving, for the fruit juices on the bottom to thicken, and also because it is too hot to eat right away. The best would be to add a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of the warm cobbler ... mmm
Unfortunately we only had green tea or coffee ice cream, so we ate them without ice cream. Hope to never make this mistake and run out of vanilla ice cream ever again! :P
