Magic Cobbler

I have mentioned several times on the blog, that husband and I eat almost exclusively home-made food, including desserts. It happened gradually, but I became kind of a foodie over the years and I spend more and more time reading and watching recipes, researching ingredients and experimenting in the kitchen.

 I am so satisfied, when I try new spices, new cooking methods, new ingredients and new proportions. This led me to growing some of my own spices, as well as collecting spices, when we travel. But more about this - perhaps in another post.

This summer I came upon a video about an easy American dessert, the vlogger called magic cobbler. Traditional cobblers originated in British American colonies during the 17th and 18th centuries. Lacking standard baking pans or proper ovens, settlers improvised by dropping raw dough over spiced fruit in cast-iron Dutch ovens over open fires. As it baked, the dropped dough puffed into a rough, "cobbled" top layer resembling a cobblestone street.

Unlike the standard cobbler, which uses biscuit dough and which I made some years previously, the Southern magic cobbler involves melted butter, over which a light mixture of flour, milk and sugar is poured and finally a handful of fresh or frozen fruit is gently arranged on top of the batter.

My version is light on sugar and heavy on the fruit and I've been making these all summer long with all sorts of seasonal fruits - strawberries, cherries, apples, pears, apricots, peaches, plums, nectarines, figs and random combinations thereof, as per the content of our fridge and fruit basket :)

Ingredients:

• 40 g butter + 10 g sunflower oil
• 80 g sugar
• 160 g milk
• 100 g flour + 5 g baking powder
• 250 g fruit 

Preparation:

Cut the fruit into small bites or slices, you can cover them with some vanilla sugar, if you want. The amount of fruit is arbitrary - 200 g is probably the minimum, but I've gone up to 600 g with some fruit.

Place the mixture of butter and oil in the baking dish and put it in the oven to melt at 200C. I get the best results, when the oil mixture is hot, just close to the point, when the butter begins to burn - be careful not to overpass this point, as butter contains milk solids, that scorch quickly over high heats. Meanwhile prepare the batter, mixing sugar, milk and flour with baking powder. You can add your favourite dessert spices here - unfortunately my folk do not enjoy most of the spices I love - cinnamon, vanilla, fig leaves powder, mahleb, lemon, but you can go as crazy or as moderate as you please with these.

Take out the baking dish with the hot oil and pour the batter in the center of the oil - it will spread and begin cooking even before you put it in the oven. Arrange the fruit pieces carefully on top of the batter and place the dish in the oven. It takes about 30 to 45 minutes, depending on the amount of fruit. A tooth pick test in the center of the pie will show you if it is completely done.

I absolutely love mine with coffee, but you can serve it with milk, tea or any other beverage of your choice. The dessert is light, it does not contain eggs and is not too sugary - if the fruits are sweet, I reduce the sugar to 70 or even 60 g, as I really dislike dishes, that are too sweet . The texture is soft and the combination of the caramelized crust with the baked fruit is exquisite. Together with the crumble - another recipe I should revisit on the blog, this is our most favourite dessert this summer!

Apple Cobbler

I know I'm just discovering hot water but I had never heard of or tasted a cobbler before and the technique of preparation is something quite different from what I'm used to when making pies. How do people come up with such easy and delicious recipes, it amazes me! I came upon the recipe late last night and immediately pinned it to try first thing in the morning - and due to the light in the kitchen I took plenty of photos while making it - apples are so photogenic :)

This is probably the easiest and quickest to prepare fruit pie, the only time-consuming effort is the peeling of the apples, but I've arranged with hubby about that for the next time :)))

Ingredients for the apple layer:

• 6 average apples
• 4 tbsp sugar
• 2 tbsp melted butter
• 2 tbsp flour
• 120 ml warm water
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• fresh lemon peel
• vanilla and cinnamon

Ingredients for the batter:

• 2 tbsp soft butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp baking powder

Preparation: Peel and cut the apples in pieces. Add the water, lemon juice, lemon peel, vanilla, cinnamon, melted butter, sugar and flour, mix and put in a slightly greased baking tin. Mix the batter: stir the butter and the sugar, add the egg, add the sifted flour, mixed with the baking powder. The resulting batter is soft and creamy. Place the batter here and there on the apples. The amazing part - it will spread itself upon them and form a crust while baking, no need to try and form the layer beforehand.

Bake in a preheated oven at 180C until the crust is light brown.

Cover with powdered sugar, if you like.

This was so quick and easy, I'll be baking more soon, probably will try pears too.

I served it with a spoonful of sour cream - m-m-m, D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S !!!

And a quick ring-shaped bread for lunch, served with cheese, butter and mixed spices. Made a bit in a hurry and not very skillfully shaped, but quite tasty nevertheless :)

And my latest project - a not so complicated self-drafted cardigan for my husband. I wanted it to have a small figure on the plain back, reflecting the cables on the front, but unlike the cable on my orange sweater, which is part of the yoke decreases, this figure had to lay flat and not to shrink the back. So I played with it all afternoon and came up with this chart, compensating for the cables with adding and then decreasing additional stitches. I think I'm quite happy with it and now can proceed to knitting it onto the back of the cardigan.