Showing posts with label Berries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Berries. Show all posts
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Cobblers have to be one of my favorite desserts to bake, and there is nothing better than an easy berry cobbler for this time of year when we are right in the middle of berry season.
What I love about cobblers is there is no faffing about with crusts, no rolling, etc. You just pour some sweetened berries and pop them into a casserole dish, top with the cobbler topping and bake away.
They really make for a simple and delicious dessert option.
There is also quite a variance in how you choose to top them. Some people choose to top them with biscuits, some with store bought canned biscuits. There is really no right or wrong when it comes to cobbler.
Today I am topping mine with a lovely buttermilk cake-like batter, which is incredibly moreish and very easy to make. Again, no faffing about with rolling or cutting. Just beat everything together and dollop it on top!
.jpg "Mixed Berry Cobbler")
With this version as well, its up to you what berries you decide to use. I happened to have a mixture of berries in my refrigerator so I used blackberries, raspberries, blueberries and the last of my strawberries.
But you can use just one kind if that is all that you have, or any combination that you have available to use. I haven't used frozen berries, but I can't see why they wouldn't work as well. I think I would thaw them first however.
This recipe I am sharing today has been adapted and down sized from a recipe which I found in the cookery book, Baking at Home with the Culinary Institute of America.
.jpg "Mixed Berry Cobbler")
WHAT YOU NEED TO MAKE MIXED BERRY COBBLER
Simple ingredients. Nothing out of the ordinary here. The original recipe made 12 servings. I have switched it out to serve only 6. (Maybe less if they are really big eaters.)
- 3/4 cup (105g) plain all purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 4 TBS (1/4 cup/60g) butter, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup (100g) sugar divided
- 1 small free range egg, lightly beaten
- 1/4 cup (60ml) buttermilk
- 1 1/2 pints (3 cups) mix of blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries
.jpg "Mixed Berry Cobbler")
If you don't have small free range eggs, then you can use one half of a large egg which has been beaten together with a fork. This should equal 2 TBS of beaten egg that you will need.
Cream of tartar helps to stabilize whipped egg whites when making meringues, prevents sugar from crystallizing and acts as a leavening agent in baked goods.
Because this recipe uses both baking soda and cream of tartar you can substitute 3/4 of a teaspoon of baking powder in its place if you don't have any.
.jpg "Mixed Berry Cobbler")
Second you can just mix equal parts of whole milk and whole milk plain yogurt to equal the amount of buttermilk needed. (so 1/8 cup/30ml of each whole milk and whole milk yogurt, equaling 1/4 cup/60ml)
.jpg "Mixed Berry Cobbler")
.jpg "Mixed Berry Cobbler")
.jpg "Mixed Berry Cobbler")
.jpg "Mixed Berry Cobbler")
.jpg "Mixed Berry Cobbler")
.jpg "Mixed Berry Cobbler")
HOW TO MAKE MIXED BERRY COBBLER
This is really such a simple dessert. It does involve using your oven, but only for half an hour or so. Some things are just worth it.
Preheat the oven to 350*F/180*C/ gas mark 4. Butter a 7 by 11 inch baking dish really well. Set aside.
Sift the flour, soda, cream of tartar and salt into a bowl. Set aside.
In a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle, cream together the butter and 1/3 cup (63g) of the sugar on low speed until light in texture. Beat in the egg until smooth. (Alternately you can use an electric hand mixer.)
.jpg "Mixed Berry Cobbler")
Add the flour, alternately with the buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour mixture.
Mix the berries with the remaining sugar and scatter them in the baking dish. Spoon the cake batter over the top in dollops.
Bake in the preheated oven for 35 to 40 minutes until the filling is bubbling and a toothpick inserted into the cake batter comes out clean.
Let stand for 10 minutes and then serve warm, spooned into bowls with scoops of vanilla ice cream or pouring cream if desired.
.jpg "Mixed Berry Cobbler")
If you would prefer you can make a biscuit topping. This one is a simple version. You will need:
- 3/4 cup (105g) plain all purpose flour
- 3 TBS sugar
- 3/4 tsp baking powder
- pinch salt
- 3 TBS butter, cold and cubed
- 1/4 cup (60ml) cold buttermilk
- buttermilk and coarse sugar to glaze
.jpg "Mixed Berry Cobbler")
Whisk the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Drop in the butter and cut it in with a pastry blender, or two round bladed knives until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in the buttermilk until evenly combined.
Take out spoonful's of the dough and gently flatten and stretch it with your hands. Place haphazardly on top of the fruit. Brush with buttermilk and sprinkle with sugar.
Proceed to bake as per the recipe, until the fruit is bubbling and the biscuit topping is golden brown and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
.jpg "Mixed Berry Cobbler")
This is really good served warm, spooned into bowls, topped with vanilla ice cream or pouring cream. I have never had a person turn down a bowl of this yet!
Some other great cobbler recipes on the blog are:
BUMBLEBERRY COBBLER - Containing random bits of all of the berries we have available at the moment, the only real requirement being that there be at least three different types of berries. Lightly flavored with lemon sugar and topped with a crumbly buttery, vanilla infused scone topping and baked until the berries are all bubbling up and sweet, the scone topping is browned and crisp, and the whole thing together is one delicious mass of tasty cobbler goodness.
SKILLET CHERRY COBBLER - This really is a very simple recipe, which enables you to get on with doing other things. Its as simple as popping your filling into an oven-proof skillet and topping it with an easy buttermilk biscuit topping.
Mixed Berry Cobbler
Yield: 12
Prep time: 15 MinCook time: 40 MinTotal time: 55 Min
There are about as many varieties of cobblers as there are people. This one boasts an almost cake type of topping. Its delicious served warm and spooned into bowls with ice cream.
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup (105g) plain all purpose flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp cream of tartar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 4 TBS (1/4 cup/60g) butter, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup (100g) sugar divided
- 1 small free range egg, lightly beaten
- 1/4 cup (60ml) buttermilk
- 1 1/2 pints (3 cups) mix of blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, strawberries
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350*F/180*C/ gas mark 4. Butter a 7 by 11 inch baking dish really well. Set aside.
- Sift the flour, soda, cream of tartar and salt into a bowl. Set aside.
- In a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle, cream together the butter and 1/3 cup (63g) of the sugar on low speed until light in texture. Beat in the egg until smooth.
- Add the flour, alternately with the buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour mixture.
- Mix the berries with the remaining sugar and scatter them in the baking dish. Spoon the cake batter over the top in dollops.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 35 to 40 minutes until the filling is bubbling and a toothpick inserted into the cake batter comes out clean.
- Let stand for 10 minutes and then serve warm, spooned into bowls with scoops of vanilla ice cream or pouring cream if desired.
Thanks so much for visiting. Do come again!
I am sharing a heavenly dessert with you today. Perfect for the upcoming national celebrations which, here in North America, we will be taking note of on both the 1st and the 4th of July. But holidays aside, this fabulously tasty dish is welcome any time and on any occasion!
Berry Angel Pie! What you have here is a really light dessert, which is perfect to serve after a heavy meal or when you have been BBQ-ing.
I have shared a lemon version of this before. You can find that recipe here. It is really lucious. I hope you will forgive me for the bad photography of that one.
It was pretty early in my blogging days and I didn't have a great camera, etc. I have improved a bazillion times since then!
I found myself earlier this week with a quantity of berries that needed using up. I love, LOVE berry season when you can enjoy your fill of fresh berries!
When I was living in the UK, we grew all of our own soft fruit in the garden. We had black currants, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries and gooseberries. I will miss having such an abundance of those little gems.
There is nothing so wonderful as being able to eat soft fruit like that, freshly picked. It just tastes so much better than the super-market stuff.
You never know how long it has taken for that fruit in the shops to get to the supermarket shelves. A lot of it comes from great distances away and it just never tastes that good to me.
These berries came from Ontario and Mexico, so, not quite as good as they will be a bit later on in the season. I saw fresh local strawberries at the farm market behind my house today.
A bit on the pricey side. As the season moves along they will get cheaper. I can't wait! I used to pick tons of strawberries every year when the children were growing up. Most of it got made into jam.
When you have five hungry children to feed, you go through a lot of jam, and strawberry was their favorite! As they got older they would help me pick berries, not their favorite job, but then again, do any children really enjoy this type of chore?
Probably not!
One year when we were visiting my in-laws on the Island, their father took them berry picking and when they got back my MIL let them set up a small stand at the end of the driveway so that they could sell some of their boxes of berries.
They sold every box more than once, lol. My in-laws lived in a community of retired folks.
The old guys were buying boxes of berries and then giving them back to the children so they could sell them again. The kids were amazed!
Most of the time in those days berries would be made into jam, or served as Strawberry Shortcake. Occasionally a strawberry pie would be baked, or a blueberry pie. (My father's favorites!)
Angel Pies are basically composed basically of a sweet meringue crust, which is baked in a moderate oven until golden brown. It is crisp on the outside, but chewy and marshmallow like on the inside.
Onto that goes lightly sweetened whipped cream and on top of that fresh berries
The meringue crust for this version is slightly different than the usual. It contains a small amount of baking powder, which makes it rise nice and tall.
It also has a quantity of broken cookies folded into the meringue before baking. I used custard creams because I was topping it with berries.
I knew that the vanilla like flavor of the custard creams would go very well with the berries. You might think that folding broken cookies into a meringue prior to baking it is an unusual thing, and perhaps it is.
But the end result is a fabulous crust. Crisp on the outside. Billowing and soft on the inside, and studded with these crunchy/chewy bits that become almost like a toffee-like, and yet not. Its hard to describe.
Your family will wonder what it is that is giving it that fabulous texture and flavor. You can't quite put your finger on it. Its just amazing.
I can think of only one word to describe it and it is this. MOREISH!
Combine that with the soft richness of whipped cream. Oh sure you could use frozen whipped if you wanted to and even the lower calorie frozen whipped topping if you are watching your calories.
In fact you could use low sugar, reduced fat cookies in the crust as well. But, I like to keep things as natural as I can.
Processed foods to have their place, but if I can use something natural and pure, I would rather use that.
I also prefer the flavor of real whipped cream over the artificial stuff. I am not even fond of squirty cream that comes out of the can.
I do sweeten the cream a tiny bit. I add about two teaspoons of sugar to it. It just adds a slight hint of sweetness.
I don't sweeten the fruit at all. I just wash it. Dry it. Slice the strawberries and then arrange them on top with the blueberries.
What you have here is a delightful dessert, with a crisp soft marshmallow inside base of a crust filled with toffee-ish bits, combined with rich cream and then tart berries.
Altogether this is incredibly delicious as well as being very simple and easy to make. I think you are going to love this one. I can pretty much guarantee your family will also!
Berry Angel Pie
Yield: 6
Prep time: 15 MinCook time: 30 MinTotal time: 45 Min
With its crisp meringue crust this is a real favorite during the berry season!
Ingredients
- 3 large free range egg whites
- 2/3 cup (130g) granulated sugar (in the UK use castor sugar)
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 10 custard cream type of cookies/biscuits, coarsely broken into bits
- 1 cup (240ml) whipping cream
- 2 tsp sugar
- 1 cup (150g) sliced strawberries
- 1 cup (190g) fresh blueberries
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350*F/180*C/gas mark 4. Butter a 9-inch pie plate really well, or spray with low fat cooking spray. Set aside.
- Whisk together the first amount of sugar and the baking powder. Set aside.
- Beat the egg whites in a clean grease free bowl with an electric whisk until soft peaks form. Slowly start to add the sugar mixture, beating continuously, until the mixture becomes glossy and forms stick peaks. Fold in the broken cookies.
- Spread this mixture into the prepared pie plate.
- Bake for 25 to 30 minutes until lightly browned. It will look really puffed up, but don't worry it will sink.
- Allow to cool completely in the pan, on a wire rack.
- Whisk the cream along with the 2 tsp of sugar in a clean, grease free bowl until thick. Spread into the meringue crust.
- Top with the sliced berries. Serve immediately.
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One of my great loves is cornbread or corn muffins. There is something about their rustic qualities that really speaks to my heart and gets my tastebuds tingling.
This Blueberry & Vanilla Breakfast Corn Bread is one of my favourite ways to enjoy cornbread. It has all of the elements of a regular corn bread which I enjoy, but it has been amped up to a degree that will have everyone smacking their lips in anticipation!
I have enjoyed a life long love affair with cornbread. It wasn't something I actually grew up with in my family home, but something which I got to enjoy elsewhere.
My first Mother In Law used to make a Corncake, which was a simple Cornbread. You can find the recipe for that here. Mother In Law's Corncake.
Another favourite of mine is a Custard Filled Cornbread Recipe, which you can find here. This version actually had niblets of real corn in it and a creamy centre, which is really quite appealing, especially served warm with Maple Syrup.
I use blueberries, but you can also use cranberries, or raspberries if you wish. Blackberries would also be nice. Blueberries are perfect for this time of year however. Back home they are picking wild blueberries by the bucketload.
Oh how I miss the flavour of Nova Scotia Wild Blueberries. Their flavour cannot be beaten!
I like to bake this cornbread in a ceramic or square glass baking dish. This helps to hold in the warmth while you are waiting for everyone to come downstairs to the breakfast table.
The square dish also makes it very easy to cut into squares. You can also bake it in an 8 inch round cake tin if you want to. You can then cut it into wedges, like a cake or a pie. Also very attractive.
I think it is quite beautiful cut into squares and served warm. We like it spread with softened butter and drizzled with liquid honey. Especially pure clover honey.
Oh my but what a breakfast for the Gods this is. We just cannot get enough of it. We can easily make big pigs of ourselves when we are eating this.
The butter melts down into that moist and delicious cornbread. I love the texture of cornbread. Its almost cake like with a bit of a bite from the cornmeal that is quite appealing.
Its a tiny bit crunchy, but not obnoxiously so. Its quite pleasant.
Look at that drizzle of honey, sweet and lush, mingling with the butter and melting into that beautiful cornbread.
The honey . . . sweet and lush . . . the melting butter lightly salty . . . and again, soaking into that dense yet light vanilla corn bread.
Pure Heavenly bliss.
It could be really hard to restrain yourself when faced with something like this. It could easily make a big pig of yourself.
Especially when you spy all of those beautiful sweet berries studded here and there throughout. Like tasty little jewels waiting to pop into your mouth.
When I lived in Canada, we often used to cross the border into the US. I loved grocery shopping stateside. I would always pick up Thomas's Toaster Corn Cakes.
They were so good and so convenient. Ready to pop into the toaster for a quick and easy breakfast and quite delicious!
I did make my own version in the past. You can find my recipe for Cranberry and Corn Toaster Cakes here.
They are really quite amazing if I don't say so myself. Beautifully textured and studded with tart cranberries.
This fabulous Blueberry & Vanilla Breakfast Corn Bread blows them out of the ballpark however. Seriously.
I am now tempted to try the toaster cakes, replacing the cranberries with blueberries. What do you think? Should I go for it?
I just might do that. This Blueberry and Vanilla Breakfast Corn Bread makes for a great weekend breakfast, or a brunch dish.
Actually, I think it is pretty great anytime. I hope I have inspired you to want to give it a go! You've got nothing to lose here and everything to gain (and I'm not talking about hips here, although they most certainly could be in some danger!)
Blueberry & Vanilla Breakfast Corn Bread
Yield: Makes on 8-inch square bread
prep time: 5 Mcook time: 45 Mtotal time: 50 M
Sweet and moist and stuffed with blueberries. Wonderful served warm with butter and honey.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup (170g) cornmeal (coarse polenta)
- 1 cup (140g) unbleached all purpose flour (plain flour)
- 3/4 cup (95g) icing sugar, sifted
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 2 large free range eggs
- 1 1/4 cups (295ml) buttermilk
- 1/2 TBS vanilla paste (alternately use 1 TBS Vanilla extract)
- 6 TBS butter, melted
- 1 1/2 cups (250g) blueberries
Instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 165*C/325*F. gas mark 3. (If using a regular pan 180*C/350*F/ gas mark 4.) Butter an 8-inch square pyrex baking dish and line with baking paper.
- Whisk together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, salt, soda, and sugar in a bowl.
- Beat together the eggs, buttermilk, vanilla and melted butter.
- Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients. Pour in the wet and mix just to combine. Fold in the berries and pour into the prepared baking dish.
- Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until well risen, golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Leave to sit in the pan for 15 minutes before cutting into squared to serve.
- This is delicious served warm with softened butter and liquid honey!
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