Tres cobbly!

After living in Alaska for a couple of years, I became very fond of wild berries. What California lacks in diversity of delicious wild berries, it makes up for in an abundance of blackberries. I tried one for the first time about three weeks ago, when I picked a perfectly ripe one right in my backyard. It was fantastic! Very, very sweet. And now they are really starting to ripen up. Last weekend, I went out to my backyard and picked about a pint of blackberries for a blackberry cobbler.

I needed something else to fill out the fruit part of my cobbler, since the berries hadn’t quite peaked yet. I wasn’t able to pick enough for a whole recipe. Luckily, along with a summer’s worth of brats, I was donated an entire uneaten quart of blueberries, which were subsequently stored in the freezer for just such an occasion. The blueberries filled out the bottom of my baking dish nicely. I mixed the berries all together with sugar, flour and lime zest (lots of limes left over from the party, too… we ran out of gin… also, lots of leftover tonic water). In a separate bowl, I made the dough, which is just a sweet biscuit dough. Easy. Only thing is, maybe I should get a big plastic bin to put the flour into. Every time I need to use flour, I make a damn mess.

The cobbler recipe (Joy Of Cooking, thanks Joelle!) tells you that there are many ways to shape the dough for your cobbler, and all but one involves the use of a rolling pin. As much as I like to bake, I do not own one of these. A rolling pin and a kettle are the two things my kitchen needs more than anything else. Oh, now that I mention it, the Magic Bullet , which is a tiny blender, would also be handy. Anyways, the method which does not require flattening the dough using a pin involves rolling “small pieces of the dough into balls, flattening each one slightly, and placing them on the fruit.” I am lazy, so I just pinch small pieces of dough off of the dough slab and place them nimby-pimby atop the fruit. Bake for 45 minutes at 375 and you’re done!

This was my second cobbler (first one was peach, made a month ago). This one was better only because I used more fruit. The last one was too doughy. I would like to make smaller cobbles next time, because the fruit needs to stand out more. Or maybe just more berries, now that they are out in force. I’m going to make another cobbler real soon. Come visit!

-Sav