My family has been in the fruit business for generations, and we've spent a lot of time searching for the best fruit cobbler. We found it in Bradley Ogden's Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner cookbook, and we've been using it ever since, albeit with a few modifications.
Why do we like it so much? The flour and sugar in the fruit mixture, as well as the dough in the middle of the cobbler, absorb the juices, making the dish even more flavorful.
In fact, it's our traditional Fourth of July dessert. We generally stick with peaches, plums and nectarines, but other fruits work well, too.
SUMMER FRUIT COBBLER
Serves about four.
Ingredients - fruit filling
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 2 tablespoons flour
- 5 cups mixed fruit of your choice (peaches, nectarines, plums, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, cherries, etc.)
Dough
- 3/4 cup flour
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 teaspoons double-acting baking powder
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
- 1/2 cup cream, half-and-half or buttermilk
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
To prepare the fruit filling, peel and slice any peaches, plums and nectarines. (Hint: We like to parboil the fruits to make them easier to remove the skin.) In a medium bowl, mix fruit, one-third cup sugar and flour.
Prepare the dough by sifting flour, one tablespoon sugar, baking powder and salt into a medium bowl. Cut the butter into the sifted flour mixture until it resembles course meal, and stir in the cream (or half-and-half or buttermilk) until it's just blended. If the dough seems too wet, add a little more flour.
Mix the fruit mixture again, then pour half the fruit into an 8-by-8-inch baking dish. Use about one-third of the dough to "dot" the fruit mixture in the baking dish before pouring the rest of the fruit on top. Drop tablespoons of the rest of the dough on top of the fruit.
Place the cobbler on the middle rack of the preheated oven, and bake for about 30 minutes. The dough should be golden brown, and the fruit should be bubbling in the center.
Let cool 15 minutes before serving. Serve with vanilla ice cream.
Adapted from Bradley Ogden's Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner by Bradley Ogden.
