What’s for Dessert

We share a monthly dinner and evening of conversation with another couple. We alternate who hosts the dinner. The host provides the main course and the other couple does the dessert. This month we were the “dessert” half of the equation, and I found a recipe by Melissa Riker for a mixed berry cobbler that I wanted to try. It turned out even better than I’d expected, so I thought I’d share it here.

Usually, a cobbler starts with a fruit layer in the pan, topped with a biscuit layer–or sometimes a cake layer. Crisps are similar, except they use a streusel layer. The basic difference is that biscuits use butter, flour, sugar, milk and baking soda, so they are cake-like, while streusels use just use butter, flour, sugar and oats and are crisp rather than cake-like. If you omit the oats, instead of a “crisp” you get a “crumble.”

Anyway, this recipe qualifies as a cobbler since it has a biscuit-like dough. But instead of putting the fruit on the bottom and the dough on top, this reverses the process and puts the dough on the bottom and the fruit on the top. This gives a more cake-like basis for dish and makes it easier to plate.

My variation uses a bit more sugar than Melissa’s for the berries. I also added corn starch to the fruit to make it less runny. The cobbler in the picture used blueberries, while hers used a double portion of blackberries. Basically, any mix of berries or stone fruits totaling roughly two cups would work well. With similar recipes, I’ve used plums and they turned out awesome. I suspect you could use frozen fruit. If you do, I would add more corn starch and not thaw it out first. I think canned peaches would work well, too–if you use them, get some with “light syrup” and drain it first.