THE FRUIT COBBLER

I consider the fruit cobbler to be the 'in between" of a bowl of fruit and a pie. I make a cobbler when I am too lazy to make a pie, don't want all of the calories or don't have enough time to make a pie. I find making a cobbler a faster procedure than making dough, chilling it and rolling it out as you do for a pie. Still, nothing beats a great homemade pie. Pictured here is a cherry cobbler I made yesterday with about 3/4 of a cup of blueberries added to it. These are cherries from my backyard.

I follow a recipe from http://www.cooks.com and make variations and substitutions. Here is the standard recipe.

Dough:

1 cup flour

3 tbsp sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

4 tbsp chilled butter cut in pieces

1/2 cup half and half

Fruit:

1 pound rhubarb

2/3 cup sugar

1 tbsp flour

1 1/2 cups strawberries

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Butter a 7 x 11 inch baking dish. Cut rhubarb into pieces and toss with flour and sugar. Put into the pan and place in oven for 7 minutes while you prepare the cobbler dough.

For cobbler dough, mix flour. sugar, baking powder and salt. Cut in the butter, mix together. Add the half and half. Get rhubarb out of the oven and put the strawberries on top. Then put cobbler on top of the rhubarb and strawberries. You need to drop the dough by spoonful onto the fruit mixture. Bake for about 20 - 25 minutes. The dough should be a golden color when done.

I make a number of variations using this recipe as my base. Depending on the amount of fruit I have I also use a 9 inch baking pan. I like to have a generous amount of fruit in the pan. For a berry cobbler I use about 4 plus cups of fruit, it depends on how deep of a pan you are using. I will vary the sugar depending on the type of fruit you are using. For berries, I use about 1/2 of sugar or splenda. I use splenda instead of sugar in order to cut down on my sugar intake. Also with a cherry cobbler, I will add a teaspoon of almond flavoring. I will also use minute tapioca instead of flour mixed in with the fruit. I will add about 2 tablespoons of minute tapioca. I have made cobblers with rhubarb and strawberries, apples, cherries, blueberries and saskatoons. The other changes I make are with the dough . I don't have half and half in my fridge so I use milk instead. I may also substitute butter for margarine. For this cobbler pictured here, I used applesauce instead of butter in the dough and added 1/2 cup of applesauce. If you want to eliminate or reduce the amount of fat in your baking recipes, you can substitute applesauce for the fat.

Bon appetit. Until next time......