By Donna.
Nothing says summer to me like a cobbler.
What is a cobbler? Basically, it is a bottomless fruit pie with a sweet biscuit topping rather than a crust. Confused? Don’t be. It is SO SIMPLE.
With fruit summer fruits, this is what my mother used to make for weekend desserts. Simple and DELICIOUS. Enjoy.
Ingredients:
A whole bunch of fruit – I used about 12 stalks of rhubard, 2 apples, and about 8 strawberries
A dusting of sugar for the fruit (or something to sweeten it – you could use honey, white sugar, demarara sugar – whatever you have to hand)
1 cup flour
1/4 cup plus 2 teaspoons caster sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup buttermilk
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions:
Clean and chop rhubarb into piece. Mine were about half-inch wide chunks.
Peel, core and dice the apples.
Quarter the strawberries (or smaller if you don’t mind them cooking down and infusing strawberry flavour throughout the cobbler).
Line the bottom of a baking dish with the fruit, and dust with sugar (about one or two teaspoons lightly sprinkled over the fruit).
Bake for 20-30 minutes (you need to cook the rhubarb down before adding cobbler)
Prepare the cobbler.
Whisk flour, 1/4 cup of the sugar, the baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a large bowl.
In a separate bowl, whisk the buttermilk, butter, and vanilla together.
Note: if you do not have buttermilk, you can use milk, add a squeeze of lemon, and let curdle. This works. It is more of a consistency thing that you are after if you substitute.
In a third small bowl, add the remaining 2 teaspoons sugar; set aside.
Stir the liquid mix into the flour mix until just combined (no obvious bits of flour left).
Remove the cobbler filling from the oven and stir.
Take the cobbler dough and break of blobs and arrange them on top of the fruit.
Sprinkle the tops of the biscuits with the sugar.
Bake for another 20 minutes or until the biscuit topping is golden brown and finished.