Sunday, September 9, 2012

Blueberry and peach cobbler also known as crips or brown betty ブルーベリーとピーチコブラー

You may have noticed my wife's non-izakaya items started appearing more often. It is getting more difficult for me to come up with new Izakaya style dishes and an occasional entry from my wife is a great help. This is one such post. In the summer when berries and fresh fruit are in abundance my wife makes cobblers. This day she made cobbler out of leftover blueberries and peaches.


This recipe can be made in individual serving dishes or as one large baking dish. I tend to like individual servings because it gives a nice ratio of crunchy crust to cooked fruit. For this recipe I used individual dishes. 

Topping: 2 cups flour, 1 cup sugar, 2 tsp. baking powder,1/4 tsp cinnamon, 1/8 tsp. nutmeg, 2 beaten eggs (plus a 3rd egg set aside to use if needed), 1 tsp of vanilla, one stick of butter melted, 2 pints blueberries, several peaches sliced.

topping halved

1 cups flour, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 tsp. baking powder,1/8 tsp cinnamon, 1/8 tsp. nutmeg, 2 beaten eggs, 1/2 tsp of vanilla, 1/2 tsp of butter melted, 1 pint blueberries, several peaches sliced.

Mix the dry ingredients together. Put the fruit in a bowel and lightly coat it with some of the dry mixture then put the fruit into the cooking containers leaving some room for the topping. In this case I used 4 small soufflé and 4 small Pyrex dishes.

Next comes the tricky part—getting the right mixture of eggs to dry ingredient to make the crumb for the topping. The secret is that the more egg in the topping the crunchier it becomes but if you put in too much egg it turns into a mass rather than a crunchy crumb. So I start with the two eggs called for in the recipe and using my fingers mix it into the flour mixture until crumb starts to form. Then I carefully add the extra egg I set aside a little at a time until the crumb gets larger and start to stick together into large pieces (Picture on lower right). I never use the entire third egg. Once I get the crumb to the right consistency I sprinkle it over the fruit in the containers. Then I add the vanilla to the melted butter and drizzle the butter evenly over the crumb topping.

I put the containers on a cookie sheet (because they frequently bubble over) and cook in a 375 F oven for about 30 minutes for individual containers and 45 to 50 minutes for a single large container or until the fruit is bubbling and the topping is a rich dark brown.

This dish is the essence of summer. The fruit forms a kind of jelly on the bottom and the topping is pleasingly crunchy and slightly sweet with a vanilla butter flavor. Can’t go wrong with this combination. 

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