Big Blackberries in a Cobbler

Summer is in full swing! The strawberries from the farm stand on Hwy. 12 are their usual amazing flavor bombs, there is ripe rhubarb in my friend's garden (and now in my crisper...thanks Water Woman!), the zucchini are finally large enough to harvest and were grilled for our dinner last night, and, perhaps best of all, the ollaliberries (a cousin of regular blackberries) along the road are ripe and juicy and bursting with flavor.

Like fresh apricots, their period of ripeness is fairly short, about a week and a half or two weeks, so when there are enough of them to gather and eat it is always a celebration. The regular blackberries last longer and will be ripe in about three weeks, just as the ollaliberries ar finishing. Most of those I picked a few days ago were the 'king' berry, the on in the middle that blooms first, so is ripe first. Because we had a rainy spring, the berries are full of juices, too.

I decided to bake a nice cobbler to showcase them. Our Australian friends who are visiting enjoyed the cobbler a lot. To make the cobbler, the berries are rinsed, then mixed with a combination of sugar and cornstarch. I also added a touch of sea salt and some lemon zest for zing.

For the cobbler part I used a recipe from the Fannie Farmer Cookbook by Marion Cunningham for streusel topping for pie. I varied it (what a surprise!) by adding a bit of old fashioned oats since I like the added crunch The streusel is basically butter, flour, brown sugar and, in this case, oats, with the butter being very cold and being cut into the flour/sugar/oat mixture with a pastry cutter or two knives. You can also rub the butter in, which I did at the end since I wanted and almost cookie dough like texture.

I used half the streusel for another recipe, which I'll post about soon, and half I sprinkled over the berry mixture before baking it. My whole house smelled like summer once the berries warmed up and released their juices. Wonderful! Even with the corn starch this is a juicy dessert, as you can see in the photo at the top. Bowls work well for serving. I served portions with a small scoop of vanilla soy milk ice cream. A grand summer dessert and pretty easy, too.

Olallieberry Cobbler
Serves 6-8

1/4 - 1/2 cup sugar (depending on how tart the berries are)
1/4 - 1/2 cup corn starch (depending on how juicy the berries are)
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
2-3 pints olallieberries, rinsed and drained
1/4 pound, 1 stick, 4 oz, 8 tablespoons butter or margarine, very cold
1 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup old fashioned oats

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 9 x 9-inch square pan with cooking spray. Set aside.

In a large bowl mix together the sugar, corn starch, salt and lemon zest. Add the berries and toss to coat. Pour berries into the prepared pan. Set aside.

In a large bowl mix together the flour and brown sugar. Cut in the butter until mixture forms clumps.
Divide streusel in half and save half for another use. Sprinkle remaining clumps of streusel evenly over the berries. Bake in preheated oven for 20-25 minutes, or until streusel in golden brown and berries are bubbly along the sides of the pan.

Cool on a rack for at least 10 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature. Garnish with ice cream, custard, or cream if desired.

The Big Berries That Come In First

Every year the berries down the driveway, near the road, are the first to flower and the first to bear ripe fruit. They are also the biggest berries of the season.

 Since they were here when we moved in I really don't know the variety, but I suspect that they are boysenberries. What I do know is that they are juice and sweet and have an intoxicating fragrance. This year since we had enough rain over the fall and winter they are also prolific. I have already picked a half dozen pints and have barely made a tiny dent in the number available right now, ripe and soft and full of juice. There are also many hundreds that have just begun to get red, and some still green. I may even make jelly this year there are so many!

One of the easiest ways to bake with these berries is to make a cobbler. The fruit gets mixed with a bit of sugar, if needed, and some lemon zest or orange zest and then cooked in the oven until hot. A cobbler mixture, which is just biscuit dough and sugar with a little extra milk or water, is spooned over the hot berries, then the whole thing is baked until the topping is golden brown and the berries' juices are bubbly. If you like you can sprinkle on some sparkling sugar for a bit of shine and crunch on the topping. Be sure to let the whole pan cool down just a bit before serving because those juices can burn your tongue! Been there and done that.

I like to serve my cobbler with a scoop of ice cream. This time I used a nice soy based, non-dairy vanilla from Double Rainbow. The cold ice cream makes a nice contrast to the hot cobbler.

Boysenberry Cobbler
Serves 4-6

1 1/2 to 2 pints boysenberries, washed and drained (or you can use blackberries)
sugar to taste
1/2 teaspoon lemon or orange zest
Your favorite biscuit recipe, with 2 tablespoons brown sugar added and an extra 2 tablespoons milk
(I used soy creamer instead of milk)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Grease a small baking pan. (I use a ceramic one that holds 4 cups)
Place the berries in the prepared pan and sprinkle with the sugar (if needed). Cover pan with foil and bake 10-15 minutes. Fruit should be hot and have release some of the juices.

While fruit is baking, mix together your biscuit recipe, adding the brown sugar to the dry ingredients and the extra milk to the we ingredients. The end result should be drop biscuits with dough that falls off a spoon.

Remove fruit from oven and uncover. Drop mounds of the dough evenly over the hot fruit, leaving some space where the fruit peeks through. If desired sprinkle 1-2 teaspoons sparkling sugar over the dough. Uncovered, return the baking pan to the oven and bake about 20 minutes until the topping is golden brown and the juices are bubbly.

Let cool 5 minutes, then serve. Garnish with a scoop of ice cream or whipped cream if desired.


Last, but not least, here is a photo of an intense red poppy in my garden:

Spring Berries In A Cobbler

The blackberries are going to be amazing in about a month. The flowers are larger than usual and there are four or five times as many as most years. I might even make enough blackberry syrup to keep for the winter.

Right now we are enjoying the berries of spring which are either olallieberries or boysenberries or another similar berry. The vine grow down by the road and are mixed in with grape vines and mint, so picking them mean peeking under grape leaves as well as berry leaves and then a sudden rush of mint smell when mint leaves are bruised either underfoot or because they are in the way of nabbing that perfect, large, ripe berry nearby.

These berries are a dark raspberry red when ripe, the juice sacs are large and they come easily off the vine when ripe and don't leave any part behind like raspberries do. They tend to be a bit tart, even when very ripe. Last week I made a nice cobbler with a couple of freshly picked pints of them. It really is easy to make a cobbler, especially with fruit that has a lot of juice. The basic method is to bring the fruit to a boil, usually in the oven, then place dollops of cobbler batter over the hot fruit. The topping bakes into something closer to biscuits than dumplings, but the part where the batter sits on the fruit soaks up some of the juices as it cooks while the top of the cobbler gets nice and golden brown. You may want to taste the fruit before starting the recipe. If it's too tart you add some sugar at the beginning of cooking so it melds with the fruit by the time you top with the cobbler batter.

Fruit Cobbler

2 pints fresh berries, rinsed and drained
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Sugar to taste
Shortening or spray oil for greasing the baking pan
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup self-rising flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 - 1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1 stick (1/2 cup) cold butter

Optional- sanding sugar and / or sliced almonds to top cobbler batter.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.  Grease a 9x9-inch baking pan. Set aside.

Pick through the berries, discarding any that are falling apart or moldy.Put the berries in a large bowl and sprinkle with the flour and with any sugar being used to sweeten the berries. Toss gently with clean hands.

Put the berries in the prepared baking. Cover pan with foil and bake in oven until fruit is hot and released juices are bubbling, about 15 minutes.

While fruit is baking, in a large mixing bowl combine the flour, self-rising flour, salt and brown sugar.

In a smaller bowl combine the buttermilk and almond extract.

Cut the butter into about 10 pieces, then work the cold butter into the flour mixture with a pastry cutter, two knives, of your clean fingers. Worked mixture will have mostly very small particles of flour/ butter with some slightly larger, dried pea sized bits of butter. To this mixture add the buttermilk mixture, stirring quickly with a fork, just until liquid is absorbed. You should have a soft dough. Add a little more buttermilk if you still have dry flour mixture in the bowl.

Remove the hot fruit from the oven and remove and discard the foil. Place dollops of the cobbler over the surface of the hot fruit. If desired, sprinkle with sanding sugar or sliced almonds.

Return baking dish to hot oven and bake until cobbler is golden brown, about 12 - 15 minutes.

Cool on a rack at least 10 minutes. Fruit will be very hot! Serve warm or at room temperature. Garnish if desired with cream, custard, whipped cream, or ice cream.

Peaches and Blackberries

A taste combo of summer that has been a favorite since I was a child is the duo of peaches and blackberries. Ripe juicy peaches have a sweetness and tang that marries well with the strongly berry taste of blackberries. When heated, like in a cobbler or pie, the berries burst, releasing their juices, which color the peaches with a magenta tinge. The peaches soften with heat and their flavor mellows, too. You can make this with either white or yellow peaches or with white or yellow nectarines.

One of my summer memories includes peaches. After going to a U-Pick orchard and bringing home bushels of ripe peaches right off the trees, the whole family would prepare them, either by canning (when I was younger) or by freezing (when I was older and we had bought a stand along freezer). A huge pot of boiling water was used to blanch the fruit so that the skins would slip right off. My job was to take the still hot peach, slip off the skin, and slice it with the fruit going into a bowl of acidulated water and the pits going in the trash. Later my Mom and Dad would mix the sliced fruit with sugar and pectin for jam or with a sugar mixture for canning or freezing or for pie filling. I helped ladle the fruit into the canning jars or freezer containers.

The same jobs I helped with were also done by my sisters and brothers once they were old enough to work with hot fruit. A whiff of hot peaches brings back a visual of me sitting at the newspaper covered table with peach juice dripping down my arms. Remembering that it was also usually humid and 90+ degrees, you might understand that this isn't exactly a treasured memory, even though I did enjoy those peaches later in the year.

Peach and blackberry cobbler is an old fashioned favorite dessert. Over the weekend I visited Natasha and took along a cobbler to share after lunch. Because I was tired (turns out I have a strong allergic/asthmatic reaction to this time of year in our area ;) I used packaged Bisquick to make the cobbler. I added a little sugar and some ground cardamom and nutmeg to the biscuit batter and sprinkled almonds on the top. It looked wonderful and tasted even better. Soft, warm, sweet peaches and fresh off the brambles (right before being baked) blackberries were surrounded by the cobbler mixture, which soaked up their juices. We topped dishes of the cobbler with a froth of whipped cream (but I had left my camera at home, so no photos) which finished them off nicely.

As you can see by the date of the post, it has taken a while to finish this. Today is Thurs, Aug. 20. Have had a cough for a couple of weeks so went to see the doctor Monday afternoon. Turns out I have a seasonal allergy that is causing the cough, some wheezing, and fatigue. Fortunately the fog returned the next day and each evening since, so a lot of the pollens that were giving me trouble at least get taken out of the air at night. I'm feeling much more myself...less tired and not as cranky, either. Maybe I'll get this post finished before it is September :)

Peach and Blackberry Cobbler

serves 6-8

8-9 ripe peaches or nectarines, peeled, pitted and sliced
1 pint blackberries, washed and drained or patted dry
2 cups Bisquick (I used the low fat version)
1 cup low fat milk ( or more if needed...the batter should pour)
1 -2 tablespoons sugar
1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Butter a 9 inch cake pan or use a cast iron skillet.

In a large bowl, combine the peaches slices and the blackberries. Pour them into the prepared pan.

In a mixing bowl stir together the Bisquick and milk. Add the sugar and spices and mix just until combines. Batter should be thin enough to just pour.

Pour the batter over the fruit. Spread to cover the fruit.

Optional: Sprinkle top with a tablespoon or two of sliced almonds.

Bake in preheated oven 20 - 30 minutes or until topping is golden brown.

Serve warm, with ice cream, or whipped cream or pour some cream over.

A Second Chance

Which of us doesn't need a second chance? The first time we messed up somehow...spaced out or were immature or too tired or a hundred other possible things got in the way. Mother nature, bless her, rarely gives us a second chance with the progression of the fruits that find their way through the seasons. With the right cultivar we might get a fall harvest of strawberries. With a green house we can turn the seasons on their head. But to have a whole extra crop without any effort on our part...that is a true bonus...a second chance to take advantage of, in this case, an extra crop of blackberries.

This had been a great year for blackberries. For weeks I harvested a handful each morning to sweeten up my breakfast oatmeal. I did make a few dishes with the berries, but I grew busy with the new job just when the berries were at their peak and most bountiful. So many were never harvested and just dried on the vines.

Then we had a weird combination of some cool followed by a long sustained heat spell. Well, the blackberries must have thought it was spring and summer all over again. A whole new crop came into being and now they are hanging ripe and sweet, juicy and very seductive in clusters, just waiting to be picked and appreciated.

The other day I spent long enough picking them to fill a pint basket. The Gravensteins are almost finished, but there were some nice apples just right for combining with the berries in a berry-apple cobbler. The topping is not difficult...just a combination of ground almonds, packaged biscuit mix and sugar, plus enough milk to make a cobbler dough that can spread over the fruit. Sweetie had two helpings and was duly appreciative that Mother Nature gave us a second chance for summer's berries in mid-September.

Andrea of Andrea's Recipes is hosting a second round of Grow Your Own. Even though I didn't have to do much of anything to grow these great berries and apples, I think this dish qualifies. Go on over later in the month to check out the yummy dishes in the event. You'll be glad you did.

Blackberry-Apple Cobbler

1 pint fresh blackberries, washed and drained

1 cup tart apple chunks, peeled or unpeeled

1 cup biscuit mix, such as Bisquik

1/2 cup almonds, ground until fine in a food processor with

2 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 cup milk

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

In wide baking dish place berries and scatter the apple chunks over them evenly. The apple chunks should be about the same size as the berries. Cover the dish with foil and press edges to seal. Place dish in preheated oven and bake for 15 minutes, or until the berries give up some of their juice and the juice bubbles.

While the fruit is cooking, mix the ground almond/sugar mixture with the biscuit mix in a mixing bowl. In another small bowl, mix together the milk and the brown sugar. Stir to dissolve the sugar.

When the berry-apple mixture juice is bubbly, remove the foil. Stir the milk mixture into the biscuit mixture and stir just until combined. If the mixture seems too stiff, add a little more milk. Drop the biscuit mixture over the hot fruit, spreading a little if needed, to cover most of the dish. It's OK if some of the fruit is not covered. The biscuit mixture will spread a little more as it cooks.

Bake for 15 minutes or until the biscuit topping is golden brown.

Serve while hot or warm, with some light cream or ice cream over the cobbler if desired. Serves 4-6.

A Cobbler for Breadchick

A while back I had a photo of the hedge by the road with the berry bushes in flower. They are not the standard blackberries...those are just flowering now.

I'm not really sure what kind they are since they were well established when we moved her over 20 years ago, but there are two kinds, both ripening at the same time. One kind has long, thin berries and they are very dark when ripe. The other has very rounded berries which are quite juicy and still have a red cast when ripe.


Today I picked enough berries to make a cobbler for dinner. I mixed the two types together. Usually I try to combine them with peaches in the cobbler, but peaches are still expensive since it is early in the season for them. For some reason the long thin and round reddish berries are earlier than usual, too.

A fruit cobbler is a fairly simple dish, especailly if you use pancake mix for the topping. A fresh berry one welcomes in the cobbler season. Once they are cooked, the berries are soft, sweet and give up lots of the juice that tastes so good with the cobbler topping and some rich cream or ice cream. Later in the season you can make it with regular blackberries, peaches, plums, apricots, and apples, too.

Since I will be gone again this weekend and will miss Breadchick's birthday, Happy Birthday!...this blackberry cobbler is for you! We joined the Daring Bakers the same month and you are a super baker. Wish I could eat it with you on your birthday, but I'll bet you'll have something wonderful that day.

Blackberry Cobbler
Based on my Mom's peach cobbler

2 cups fresh blackberries (or frozen, but thaw first)
1/4 cup sugar (or to taste)
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1/2 tablespoon cornstarch

For the topping:
1 cup Bisquick or other pancake mix
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon sugar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F., Combine berries, sugar, nutmeg, lemon juice, lemon zest, and cornstarch in a shallow ovenproof bowl or casserole dish. Bake in the oven until hot and bubbly and juice thickens.

Mix the topping ingredients together. Batter should drop easily from a spoon. When the berries ar hot, open the oven, drop the dough on top of the hot fruit in globs, leaving small spaces between the dough. Sprinkle with additional tablespoon of sugar if desired. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the topping is golden brown. Serve with cream or ice cream.

Since it is strawberry season, you can substitute equal parts of hulled, sliced strawberries and sliced rhubarb for the berries. Increase sugar to taste.