By Melissa Clark, The New York Times
Generally filled with bubbling fruit nestled into a buttery, sugary foundation, cobblers are beloved in the canon of homey desserts. The problem is, there’s no consensus about what, exactly, they are.
For some cooking authorities, like Virginia-born chef and cookbook author Edna Lewis, cobblers are baked summer peaches layered with raw pie dough to help thicken the juices, then topped with a flaky crust.
Others prefer syrupy berries covered in fluffy biscuits shaped like golden cobblestones, a likeness that may have inspired the name (or not; there’s no definitive etymology).
Then there are those who believe that cobblers consist of batter strewed with fruit, which bake up solid and caky with jammy pockets throughout.
Finding my own place on this spectrum was the first step for the final episode of my YouTube series, “Shortcut vs. Showstopper.”
All three of the aforementioned cobbler styles are fairly simple, but the batter version is the easiest. It’s made with melted butter, so there’s no need to worry about keeping the fat cold and using a gentle touch when working it into the flour — steps essential for light, flaky pie and biscuit doughs. So it was exactly the style I gravitated toward.
Standard batter cobbler recipes are so straightforward that they hardly need streamlining. But I did make one big edit: cooking everything in one skillet to reduce cleanup.
Then I made two tweaks to add depth but not work. The first was to simmer the peaches in a brown sugar and lemon juice instead of regular sugar to lend caramel notes and tang. I took it one step further by letting the butter brown after melting it, which gives the cobbler a nutty, toasty character.
Creating anything more elaborate for a showstopping recipe was a bigger challenge. After all, the point of cobbler is a fuss-free, casual and delectable dessert. I’d need a compelling reason to complicate it.
The answer was right in front of me, or rather behind me, in an upside-down peach cobbler, which I wrote about last summer. The idea here is that French apple tarte Tatin meets biscuit-topped peach cobbler, and both go head over heels.
To make it, I use peaches instead of the usual apples, letting them simmer in caramel and their own juices until they turn translucent and candied. Crunchy-topped sour cream biscuits stand in for the usual puff pastry.
Though you can make both cobblers year-round with frozen or out-of-season fruit, fresh peaches and their stone fruit cousins (nectarines, apricots and plums) are all at their peak right now and can stand in for one another depending on what you’ve got. You don’t even need pristine fruit. Cobblers are a perfect place to use up the overripe specimens that are starting to weep juices all over your fruit bowl — before you get a chance to eat them over the sink.
Instead, let those juices burble and concentrate in the oven’s high heat, imbuing your cobbler with an inimitable perfume — no matter what version you decide to make.
Recipe: Easy Buttermilk Peach Cobbler
By Melissa Clark
This easy peach cobbler is made by layering ripe, juicy fruit over batter rather than nestling it under biscuits or pie dough, giving it a tender, cakelike texture. Browning the butter before merging it with the batter adds nutty, caramelized notes, while buttermilk gives it a lovely tang. Fresh summer peaches (or other stone fruit like nectarines, apricots and plums) are ideal here, but frozen fruit also works well. Serve this warm or at room temperature, preferably on the same day as baking.
Yield: 6 to 8 servings
Total time: 70 to 80 minutes
Ingredients
- 2 pounds fresh peaches, pitted and sliced (peeling is optional), or 6 cups frozen peach slices
- 1/2 cup/110 grams packed dark brown sugar
- 2 to 3 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
- 1/2 cup/113 grams unsalted butter
- 1 1/2 cups/187 grams all-purpose flour
- 1 cup/200 grams granulated sugar, more for sprinkling
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1 1/2 cups/355 milliliters buttermilk
- 1/2 to 1 teaspoon flavoring, such as freshly grated nutmeg, citrus zest, ground cinnamon, ginger or vanilla, or 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
Preparation
1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large well-seasoned cast-iron skillet or nonstick pan over medium heat, combine the peaches, brown sugar and lemon juice. Bring the mixture to a simmer, stirring constantly, until the sugar melts and the liquid thickens slightly, 2 to 4 minutes. Pour peaches and liquid into a bowl and set aside. Taste a peach slice; if it seems flat, add another squeeze or two of lemon until bright and lively.
2. Using the same pan (you don’t need to wipe it out), melt the butter over medium heat, swirling the pan occasionally, and let it cook until it smells very nutty, turns golden brown and flecks of dark amber appear, 2 to 4 minutes. Turn off the heat and reserve the brown butter in the pan.
3. In a mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, granulated sugar, baking powder and salt. Pour in buttermilk and any flavorings you like, and mix just until combined.
4. Scrape the batter on top of the brown butter in the pan, but don’t mix it in. The butter will rise and cover some of the batter at the pan’s edges, and this is good. Scatter the peach slices and their juices on top of the batter without stirring. Sprinkle with a little more sugar if you like, for crunch.
5. Bake until the cobbler is golden brown on top, 50 to 60 minutes. Transfer the pan to a wire rack to cool slightly. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Recipe: Upside-Down Peach Cobbler
By Melissa Clark
This juicy pastry crosses a peach cobbler with a caramel-coated apple tarte Tatin. To make it, the peaches are caramelized with sugar in a skillet just like apples are in a classic tarte Tatin. But then, instead of being covered with pie dough or puff pastry, the fruit is topped with fluffy biscuit dough. While baking, the biscuits rise and brown, creating a golden, tender pillow on which the jammy fruit lands when it’s all unmolded. The whole thing is a bit more cakey in texture than the usual crisp-crusted Tatin, with the allure of fresh ripe peaches.
Yield: 8 servings
Total time: 1 hour 40 minutes
Ingredients
For the Biscuits:
- 1 3/4 cups/225 grams all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup/50 grams granulated sugar
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 6 tablespoons/85 grams cold unsalted butter, cubed
- 3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon/192 milliliters sour cream, more for serving
- 1 tablespoon Demerara or raw sugar
For the Filling:
- 3/4 cup/150 grams granulated sugar
- Pinch of fine sea salt
- 1 teaspoon honey
- 4 tablespoons/56 grams unsalted butter, cut into pieces, at room temperature
- 2 pounds small peaches or nectarines (8 to 10), halved and pitted (if using large fruit, quarter instead of halving)
- Sour cream, crème fraîche or whipped cream, for serving (optional)
Preparation
1. Place a piece of parchment or wax paper on a small rimmed baking sheet or a large plate.
2. To prepare the biscuits, in a food processor, pulse together flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Pulse in butter just until the mixture looks like lima beans. Add 3/4 cup sour cream and pulse just to combine. Alternatively, you can do this in a bowl, cutting the butter into the flour mixture with a pastry cutter or two knives, then mixing in the sour cream. If the mixture is still too crumbly to hold together, add a tablespoon or two of water (or even a bit more: It should hold together as a crumbly, but not floury, dough).
3. Transfer to a lightly floured surface and pat dough together, incorporating any stray or dry pieces. Divide the dough into 9 equal pieces and roll them into balls. Transfer to the parchment paper-lined baking pan or plate, and flatten balls into 1/2-inch-thick disks; wrap loosely with plastic and chill for at least 20 minutes or up to 24 hours.
4. Heat oven to 350 degrees. To prepare the filling, in a 10-inch nonstick skillet, combine 1/4 cup water, sugar, salt and honey. Bring to boil, stirring. Stop stirring and continue to simmer until the caramel is the deep amber brown color of an Irish setter (it may be difficult to see with the skillet), 6 to 10 minutes.
5. Remove from heat and whisk in butter (stand back, the caramel may bubble up and splatter).
6. Arrange peaches, cut side down, as close together as possible in the skillet. Return to heat and simmer the peaches in the caramel for 5 minutes, then carefully flip the peaches to cut side up. Simmer for another 5 minutes to condense the juices.
7. Top peaches with biscuits. Brush the biscuits with remaining 1 tablespoon sour cream, then sprinkle with Demerara sugar.
8. Place skillet on a rimmed baking sheet to catch any overflowing filling, and bake until biscuits are golden brown, 40 to 50 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool slightly (about 10 to 15 minutes but no longer), then carefully flip onto a serving platter, replacing any peaches that stick to the pan back onto the crust. It may look runny, but the caramel and juices will continue to set as they cool. Serve warm with sour cream, crème fraîche or whipped cream.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
