Friday, June 20, 2008

Easy Blackberry Cobbler

This week, a trip to the local farmers market yielded these beautiful blackberries. They were PERFECT! No blemishes, no bad berries, no mushy spots. We've plan to shop at our farmers market more this year. The local farmers need our support, plus the produce is literally fresh from the field.

After eating a few fresh berries I started craving blackberry cobbler. I don't know why. I've never been a big cobbler eater, but these were just begging to be in a cobbler. I went on the hunt for a quick, easy recipe and found this one, originally from Southern Living, at recipezaar.com :

Quick & Easy Blackberry Cobber

  • 1-1/4 cups sugar
  • 1 cup self-rising flour (see note below if you have all purpose flour)*
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1/2 cup butter, melted
  • 2 cups blackberries

Whisk together 1 cup of the sugar with flour & milk. Add melted butter and whisk until just blended. Pour batter into a greased 8x12 baking dish. Sprinkle blackberries & remaining 1/4 sugar over the batter. Bake at 350' for about an hour or until the crust is golden brown. You MUST serve this with vanilla ice cream.



When you bake this, the berries drop to the bottom so the crust turns golden brown.

I will share a few variations I had to make on the recipe. I used an 8x8 pan. The 8x12 pan would have yielded a thinner crust. I didn't have self-rising flour so I used the standard substitute. *Take one cup of plain flour and add 1-1/2 teaspoon of baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. I also didn't have stick butter so I used squeeze Parkay that I melted in the microwave. I also didn't have quite 2 cups of berries (all that snacking on the fresh berries took care of that). The cobbler would have been juicier with more berries.

Can you tell, like many good Southern cooks, I only use a recipe loosely. ;-)

It must have been good anyway. I didn't get any pictures of the finished cobber! The family beat me to it with spoons and vanilla ice cream in hand.

If you run across some beautiful berries of any kind, this would be a great way to enjoy them with your family! :-)