My sister-in-law and I (egad…that sounds so formal…can I just call ya V here?) do enjoy getting together on occasion to do some cooking and baking together. And, well, since she was raised in the South and I was born there, we do enjoy having a good ol’ comfort throwback to our Southern roots. Like Southern fried chicken. Which we had with risotto and a green bean salad. Oh my it did us good. I’m sensing this burgeoning tradition of ours will always involve either Thai food or Southern food. And dessert.
On this occasion, we made blackberry cobbler.
Ok, well we set out to make strawberry rhubarb cobbler, but there was nary a barb of rhu to be found. So we got blackberries instead. But when we got home and pulled out the recipes, the one that was for blackberries called for 3 1/2 cups of sugar…and while I like dessert I do also like my kidneys and pancreas to function. Also it didn’t call for a topping (other than 1 1/2 cups of sugar). I do like my cobblers to have a topping. The one that was for strawberries and rhubarb didn’t seem to call for enough cooking of the fruit, though it did have a topping. But when we saw the flour-to-yummy-goodness ratio, we saw it we more like a pie crust topping. Clearly sub-par.
So we winged it, stealing ideas from both recipes and coming up with our own.
This is what you’ll need:
2 sticks of butter, 2 cups of all-purpose flour, 4 teaspoons baking powder, 2 cups of sugar, 1 1/2 cups milk, 36 oz. of blackberries (or other fruit like blueberries or raspberries, cherries, etc.)
Note: the blackberries are not pictured in the photo above. That’s a ’cause of we ate them all.
For the topping:
4 tablespoons brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon each: cinnamon, ground ginger, salt, and 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg.
The ginger addition was inspired, let me tell you.
When you’ve assembled all your goods, set your oven to 325 degrees. Then melt the butter in an 11 x 14 pan. We stuck ours in the oven while it pre-heated and we busied ourselves with drinking beer prepping the rest of it. (Ok, well first step was wash your berries. But you knew that, right?)
Mix the flour, baking powder, 2 cups of sugar (notice a substantial reduction from 3 1/2 cups and the finished product was plenty sweet), and milk. (Truth be told, even the 2 sticks of butter might be a smidge much. I’d say a stick and half would probably do ya just as good…but then V might just slap me for such blasphemy.)
Drop mixture into melted butter (do not stir). Spread the berries over the batter. This is such a beautiful sight. I do wish I had thought to take a photo of it. The berries just melt into the batter. Bloop. Bloop.
To make the topping, just mix the brown sugar, spices and salt together, then sprinkle on top of the cobbler. Did I mention the ginger was a good idea?
Then bake at 325. Ours took about an hour and 15 minutes. And came out looking like this:
And we served ours warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Because, you know, such things should be done right proper.
Like so:
See how the ice cream just oozes joy like rain down the blackberries? Yes, I wax poetic over food. Don’t you?
Did I mention this recipe was so easy it was practically criminal? Because, oh yes. It was EASY.
With pecans! And brown sugar! And butter! And did I mention pecans?
Or…flour. ‘Cuz we don’t got no snow round here.
Atop my favorite blanket to cuddle in during cold weather – also incidentally a Christmas gift.
I’ve clearly had waaaay too much sugar today.
Normally, I’d light them on Christmas Eve. But we won’t be here for that.
With sweet angels on them. I saved the best for last.
Unless, by efficient, you mean you end up tired, sweaty and covered in flour.
Usually when I have guests over for dinner, I cook Thai food, which requires about 10-20 minutes of preparation, 10 minutes of a flurry of arm-flailing effort, and then voila! it’s served, and you have to eat it right away. But I’m starting to discover the glory of baking food, which requires you start a little earlier perhaps, but then for the hour or so the food is baking, you can do other things. Like hide the socks, jackets, books, and other bits of evidence that your home is not quite a Martha Stewart home. And light candles. And freshen up your makeup. And have a glass of wine. So you don’t look like a sweaty, disgruntled host who can’t even greet the guests as they walk in the door because you’re busy producing four different dishes at once.
Ahem. Actually, the cookbook says the first step is to preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Then take a vegetable peeler and remove a 2-inch strip of zest from the orange, cut the orange in half, squeeze juice out of one half and cute the remaining half into 4 wedges. Place two tablespoons of juice and the strip of zest in a medium saucepan for Step 4. Tuck an orange wedge into the cavity of each game hen. Sprinkle the remaining orange juice over the hens and place each breast side up in a large roasting pan, leaving space between them. (Although I cut the recipe in half for there were only 4 of us at dinner, I did use the whole orange and just put two wedges in each bird. Figured it couldn’t hurt. And actually I think it helped keep them extra moist.)
Reduce heat to low and simmer gently until the cranberries are tender, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool. Just before serving, remove orange zest. (I had a little left over orange juice, which I reserved until it was time to serve the chutney. By the time the hens had roasted the chutney had gotten a little dry, so I stirred in a little bit of orange juice just to liven it up a bit upon serving.)
I put mine on a bed of lettuce and served the chutney with a sprig of mint to decorate.
