peach and blueberry cobbler

peach and blueberry cobbler

• 8 Feb 2021

Have you ever made a fruit cobbler? If you haven't, it's a fruit base topped with scone dough, a little like a fruit crumble. I had some beautiful peaches in the fruit bowl so I hunted down a peach cobbler recipe on the internet landing on this one from Curtis Stone. I downsized the recipe, reduced the sugar, swapped out the cream then added some blueberries to the mix.

As the cobbler topping is pretty much a soft scone mix, it's best to use a light hand when mixing to avoid a hockey puck consistency when baked.

I used a small cookie scoop to shape the topping but a spoon will do.

Here's the recipe for you which makes 4 generous servings. For all my recipes I use a 250ml cup and a 20 ml tablespoon, unsalted butter and 60g eggs. My oven is a conventional gas oven so if your oven is fan forced you may need to reduce the oven temperature by 20°C.

Peach and blueberry cobbler

650g ripe yellow peaches (about 5) pitted and cut into eighths

¼ cup caster sugar

150g/1 cup blueberries

1 tbsp plain flour

1 tbsp lemon juice

pinch ground cinnamon

½ tsp pure vanilla extract

¼ tsp sea salt flakes

Cobbler topping

125 gm plain flour

½ cup yellow cornmeal (fine polenta)

55 gm (1/4 cup) caster sugar

1¾ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp sea salt flakes

60 gm chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1cm cubes

125 ml (1/2 cup) buttermilk

Place a 20 cm cast-iron skillet or ovenproof frying pan (I used the Lodge 20cm cast iron skillet from Everten)on a rimmed baking tray lined with baking paper. Gently toss peaches and sugar in a large bowl and set aside until peaches release some of their juices (25-30 minutes). Drain, reserving the juice. Add the blueberries to the sliced peaches and gently mix. In a small bowl combine the peach juice with flour, lemon juice, cinnamon, vanilla and the sea salt flakes.  Add to the fruit and toss to coat, then spread in skillet and set aside.

Preheat oven to 180°C. For cobbler topping, combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and sea salt flakes in a large bowl, add butter and rub in until it resembles a coarse meal with a few pea-sized pieces of butter remaining. Stir in buttermilk until the dough comes together and no dry bits are left on the bottom of the bowl (be careful not to overwork the dough). Using a large spoon or ice-cream scoop, divide the dough into 13 rounds, arrange them on top of the peaches, leaving a little room between each, brush tops with buttermilk and bake until filling is bubbling all over and topping is a deep golden brown (35-40 minutes).

Cool cobbler for 5 - 10 minutes and then spoon into shallow bowls and serve with a generous scoop of ice-cream.

Still warm from the oven and topped with my favourite fior di latte gelato, this was a triumph. The filling was gorgeous and the juices had soaked into the scone topping. If you don't feel like making the cobbler topping, the peach and blueberry combo would make a delicious fruit crumble.

See you all again next week with some more baking from my kitchen.

Bye for now,

Jillian