Archive for: cobbler
A slice of fresh cherry pie that is freshly baked is just about irresistible – especially when you were the one baking it and your kitchen still smells like home-baked pie. Cherry cobbler and cherry crisp are right up there, too, when it comes to tempting cherry desserts. They’re easier to make and they’re always available when they’re hot from the oven (while cherry pies typically need to cool for the filling to thicken).
These Cinnamon Streusel-Topped Cherry Crisps are individual desserts that pack a whole lot of cherry flavor into a very small package. Juicy cherries make up the main part of the dessert, of course, but a crisp and buttery streusel topping is what makes it a winner for me. The topping is made with oatmeal, ground cinnamon and brown sugar, with some chopped pecans tossed in for extra crunch and flavor. A pinch of salt adds just the right amount of contrast to the topping, so you can really taste every element alongside those cherries. Almonds would also work very well in the streusel, as they tend to be a great match with cherries.
Cherries are a fruit that are typically in season late in the spring and summer, but they keep very well and I have them in my kitchen all year round. I keep frozen cherries in the freezer and jars of good-quality cherries (packed in cherry juice) in the pantry for any occasion that I might need them for. They both work just as well as fresh cherries will – and since they seem to release a little more juice than fresh cherries, you can even end up with a slightly saucier cherry crisp. Any kind of cherries will work, from sour cherries to black cherries. I personally tend to go with the sweeter black cherries, but a mix of different types will produce an outstanding dessert.
I like these best when they’re fresh from the oven, but they keep very well and leftovers are terrific for breakfast. I heat up my leftovers for a few seconds in the microwave to warm them up again before re-serving.
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I like to think of this Peach and Strawberry Cobbler as my end-of-summer cobbler. This particular batch of cobbler was baked with beautiful fresh strawberries and a mix of perfectly ripe yellow and white peaches. The strawberries are probably some of the last top-notch berries I’ll get this season – hence the end-of-summer feeling to the dessert. It also helps that the colors in the cobbler remind me of the sunset, with the yellow and orange tones of the peaches and the more vivid red of the strawberries.
The cobbler has a lightly sweet, buttery topping above a mix of sweet and very tender fruits. I didn’t add too many extra spices or too much sugar, as I really wanted the peaches and strawberries to be the stars of this dessert and they give plenty of flavor on their own. The topping for this cobbler is a lot like a scone dough, where butter is cut into a flour and sugar mixture and then stirred together with some milk to bind it. Before the milk is added, I set aside a small amount of the flour mixture and tossed it in with the peaches and strawberries. This added a little extra sweetness and just enough flour to help thicken the juices of the fruit as the filling cooked.
I used fresh peaches and fresh strawberries for this cobbler, and I will almost always use fresh berries in a cobbler when I have them available. That said, you can definitely use frozen fruit in this recipe and get excellent results. Frozen sliced peaches can be used without defrosting, as can frozen strawberries. If possible, however, chop any very large strawberries into smaller pieces. You can also mix things up by using frozen raspberries or blackberries alongside the peaches, and nectarines can make a great substitution for the peaches, as well.
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When I make Snickerdoodles, or other snickerdoodle-inspired baked goods, I often have leftover cinnamon-sugar mix leftover that I don’t have much use for. Typically, I keep it in a small bowl or plastic bag on the counter and use it up by sprinkling it on a bowl of oatmeal or on top of other baked goods (and sometimes I just make another batch of snickerdoodles!) to use it up. I liked having the extra cinnamon sugar around so much that I eventually just made up a big batch to keep in my pantry for whatever use might come up – and that is how I ended up with this Cinnamon Sugar Apple Cobbler.
This cobbler is a good basic apple cobbler recipe. The filling is made with apples and brown sugar, with a little bit of cornstarch just to help thicken up the apples’ juices as they bake. The cobbler is a biscuit-like dough that is dropped in clumps on top of the apple filling, spreading just enough to give the dish a homey, “cobbled-together” look. The cinnamon sugar mixture goes into the cobbler mix and is used to top off the dessert before baking. The topping layer is fairly generous, resulting in a sweet and slightly crisp “crust” to the cobbler when it is ready to serve. The apples themselves are unspiced, but the brown sugar gives them a real richness.
I would recommend using a good baking apple for this recipe, choosing either a sweeter or more tart apple according to your own preferences. I happened to use pippin apples in this batch. Try to cut the apples all to the same size so that they bake evenly in the cobbler, but if you like your apples to be verging-on-applesauce tender, cut the slices in half before using them and they’ll cook down even more. This crisp is best when it comes out of the oven and is served with vanilla ice cream. It does reheat well if you don’t eat it all in one sitting, and a warmed up bowl of cobbler makes a great breakfast dish, too.
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When I think about pudding cakes, I picture a dessert that forms a pudding-like sauce at the bottom of the pan during baking. Chocolate pudding cake and lemon pudding cake are to of my very favorite recipes of this type. Throw some fruit into the mix and you have something that is a little closer to a cobbler than to one of those pudding cake recipes, but this particular fruit-filled recipe is more than moist enough to qualify for the designation.
This Apple Cider Pudding Cake has a sauce-filled fruit compote at its base and is topped with a layer of moist, spicy, gingerbread-like cake. Unlike a fruit cobbler, the apple pieces at the bottom of this dessert are diced up into small cubes, where they release more juice and become more tender than the fruit in a typical cobbler might be. I used fuji apples in this batch, but any kind of apple you like to eat will work well here. The cake is sweet and has a flavor profile that really compliments the apples, with maple syrup, brown sugar, cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg mixed into it. There is a lot of apple cider in this recipe helping to make up the sauce for the pudding cake and further enhance the apple flavor. If you don’t have apple cider, you can use apple juice or even water and the recipe will turn out just fine – although if you use water, add a bit of extra spice to your cake mix to play up those flavors even more.
This dessert is easy to whip up and tastes wonderful when it is fresh from the oven. It is a perfect comfort-food type of dish on a cold winter night and will definitely warm you up! It is good plain, but also goes well with whipped cream and vanilla ice cream. If you want to serve it for breakfast, you can even throw a splash of hot milk or cream into a bowl with it.
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Cranberry sauce can be a great addition to a cobbler or crisp recipe. The basic cranberry sauce recipe calls for whole berries and sugar, which are also the two main ingredients in most fruit cobbler recipes (although you can use fruits besides berries, of course!). The cranberry sauce is already cooked, so it isn’t necessarily a great choice on its own to serve as the base for a cobbler, but it can be combined with all kinds of other fruits to make some delicious desserts.
This recipe for Blackberry Cranberry Sauce Cobbler is a great way to use a little bit of leftover cranberry sauce. It uses whole blackberries and whole cranberries, in addition to the cranberry sauce. The blackberries are much sweeter than the cranberries, so they give a rich flavor and a nice sugar level to the dish. The cranberry sauce helps to bring out the flavor of the cranberries without emphasizing their tartness, which simply adding more cranberries could do.
Use fresh or frozen berries for this dish, depending on what you have on hand. I like it simple, with just a bit of ice cream or whipped cream on the side. It is definitely best when it is fresh from the oven – especially if it is cold outside! If you don’t have cranberry sauce, add an extra half cup of blackberries. The cobbler will have a little bit less of a pronounced cranberry flavor than the cranberry sauce version, but it will still turn out to be a tasty, simple dessert.
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