All About Cobblers
A warm-from-the-oven homemade fruit cobbler may evoke more absolute appreciation than just about any other dessert. Once considered too common to serve to guests, cobbler has been rediscovered for its pure honesty and simplicity.
Although Southern cooks make wonderful cobblers, no country or region can claim cobbler as it's own. In fact, Cooking A to Z (edited by Jane Horn) says grunt, slump, buckle, roly-poly, flummery, pandowdy and cobbler are all old-fashioned regional desserts of cooked fruit with a biscuit, dough or bread topping of some type.
No matter where cobbler originated, the South has perfected this homey fruit dessert. Of course, we are blessed with an abundance of fruits and berries in this area. And Southern cooks have traditionally been masters at pairing their piecrust and biscuits with native ingredients to create all kinds of regional specialties, including cobblers.
Cobbler Styles
Cobblers are usually defined as a fruit dessert made with a drop biscuit topping, but Southern cookbooks can offer as many as seven different recipes for this simple dessert. The variety comes not only from using different fruits, but also from how the crust is made - from traditional piecrust or biscuit dough to a wide variety of pourable batters.
An informal survey of Southern cooking authorities verified that the ultimate traditional Southern cobbler is made with flaky piecrust baked in a large pan or baking dish. Most " piecrust cobblers" are made with a bottom and top crust like our Dixie Cobbler, which may be filled with blackberries or peaches. And some serious cobbler makers like to go one step further -- baking pieces of crust on a baking sheet until brown and crisp, and then layering these crisp pieces of crust with the fruit as the cobbler is assembled.
Cobblers popular in trendy Southern restaurants are frequently topped with rich biscuit dough and are a little easier to make. The comforting Country Berry Cobbler features a mixture of berries topped with biscuit dough made with butter and heavy cream. The recipe calls for these biscuits to be rolled out, but you can make softer dough and drop the biscuits over the fruit. In fact, some believe that the name cobbler comes from dropping soft dough over fruit so that it looks rough and "cobbled".
Of course, one of the easiest ways to make a cobbler is to top fruit with a pour-on batter crust. This type of topping, like the one used in Georgia Peach and Berry Cobbler, is so easy to make that it can be ready for the oven in just a few minutes. The topping -- made with self-rising flour, sugar, milk and melted butter -- is just poured over fruit and bakes up crisp and golden brown.
No matter which topping your prefer - or how much time you have for preparation, the traditional Southern cobbler stands ready to delight both family and guests alike.
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