Rosy Blackberry Cobbler

Packed with summer-fresh berries, sliced peach, and rhubarb, this cobbler features a silky buttermilk topping. Two lemons' worth of zest marries happily with the fruits, transporting you to a sun-dappled orchard in which you romp through brambles, mouth stained with purple. I made this cobbler after a berry-picking expedition at Homestead Farm in Poolesville, Maryland.

 

Ingredients

 

1 stick butter
2 lemons

4 cups blackberries
2 peaches, thinly sliced
2-3 stalks rhubarb, sliced
3/4 cup sugar
dusting of grated nutmeg
dash or two of cinnamon
dash of ground ginger
3 Tbsp cornstarch

2 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cups sugar
dash or two of cinnamon
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 cups buttermilk

Process

Preheat the oven at 350.

Get out a 9 x 13 baking pan. No need to grease!

Melt the stick of butter in a small saucepan. When mostly melted, with one thin rectangle bobbing in its golden bath, remove from heat. The rectangle will vanish into its hot tub.

zest both lemons, producing a tinselly heap. Cut one of the lemons in half.

Toss fruit into a large bowl. Add the sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, and cornstarch. Toss with hands to combine. It's going to be glorious! Add half the lemon zest and half the melted butter. Toss some more. Oh yes!

Pour the fruit into the baking pan, spreading it so that it's even.

In another bowl, combine the flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt. Add the other half of the lemon zest. Pour in the butter and buttermilk and fold into the flour. Batter will be slightly lumpy. No overmixing!

Spread the batter over the fruit. In typical Toppled Chef style, I scooped and spread it with my bare hands. It worked out pretty well.

Bake for 45-55 minutes, until fruit is bubbling and top is golden brown.

Pull out and let cool on a wire rack. I'd eat this the next day for breakfast, but you can always serve hot with a scoop of ice cream.

Notes

 

• For the flour, I used 1 cup white and 1 1/2 cups white wheat, with a healthy shaking of flax, which is why you see speckles in the photo. You don't have to be this granola. However, any combination of flours should work. The butter and the buttermilk will ensure a tender crust.
• Likewise, you can use any combination of fruits. I happen to love the earthy blackberries jazzed with rubescent stalk fruit and mellowed with peach, but blueberry-strawberry-nectarine would be just as good.
• What kind of cobbler is this? It isn't a cakey cobbler, where the dough rises through the fruit, but the topping isn't quite a biscuit topping, as it's too runny to form mounds. It's more of a lazy fruit pie with a biscuity slump on top. This works for the Tipsy Crumpet!
• Note that the knife test doesn't work to test doneness. I pulled the cobbler out of the oven after 30 minutes because the knife came out clean. The next morning, my heart sank as I spooned out a wad of fruit clumped with undercooked batter. It was edible, but I had to put the cobbler back into the oven for another HOUR to get it to an acceptable level of non-rawness. This did the trick, in case the same kitchen pratfall occurs to you.
• Some people like a sugary cobbler. Not I! The 1 1/2 cups of sugar in this recipe go toe-to-toe with the double whammy of lemon zest and a heap of rhubarb. If you like your dessert to feel more like a slap on the face, this is the one for you.
• This makes a delightful Sunday breakfast.

Verdict

 

4 stars. Quite good, if you like your cobbler topped with a tender crust and filled with the textures, scents, and colors of summer.

Tangy Lemon-Herb Salad

This herbaceous salad dances on your tongue with a combination of summer greens, lemon, artichoke brine, and salt. You'll swoon, you'll eat more, you'll want only salad for dinner, you'll forget about dessert. If the Tipsy Crumpet would rather eat salad than anything else, you KNOW it's a good salad.

serves 4 as a dinner salad and 8 as a side salad

 

Ingredients

1 bag prewashed arugula
1 head radicchio
2 cups quartered artichoke hearts in brine (from the deli section is optimal)
1/2 cup pitted kalamata olives
any other veggie you want to add--cherry tomatoes, chopped red bell pepper, etc.
bundle fresh mint
bundle fresh chives
bundle fresh dill
1 lemon
pinch salt
few grinds pepper

Process

Obtain a large bowl. Fill with arugula.

Half the radicchio. Slice each half into ribbons, then turn 90 degrees and slice the ribbons into ribbons. It's like delicious geometry homework!

Mix the radicchio and the arugula. Add the artichoke hearts. Pour in some of the brine (when I say "some," I mean "some." Use your intuition.)

Add the olives. Give a few good tosses with your hands. Looks pretty good, doesn't it?

Chop as much mint, chives, and dill as seems appropriate. Toss with the veggies. Add any other veggies you have.

Cut the lemon in half and squeeze one half on the salad. Toss with your hands. At this point, you may nibble an arugula leaf. Does it need more lemon? Squeeze on the other half (the Tipsy Crumpet likes a LOT of lemon).

Add the salt and pepper. Toss with your hands.

Now you have a fresh, gleaming, tart, tangy, and tender dinner accompaniment.

Notes

• You could add some feta cheese. You don't need it, but it couldn't hurt.
• If you're not crazy about feta but still want cheese, grate in some parmesan or asiago, using the larger grater holes so the cheese doesn't dissolve into the dressing.
• This is a flexible salad. You can use other herbs, though chives, dill, and mint play well together and taste great with lemon. Basil would overwhelm the salad and hog all the attention. Oregano might taste too bitter. But mix and match and try anything you want. As long as you have brine, lemon, and salt, you'll want to keep eating until the last leaf is gone.
• You really don't need other veggies for this salad. But if you're serving it as a dinner salad, garlic bread would be a terrific accompaniment. Slice a whole-wheat baguette lengthwise, smear with olive oil, and top with crushed fresh garlic. A few shakes of dried basil and red pepper flakes, a brief stint in the oven at broil, and you'll have a crunchy, pungent sidekick to your meal.

Verdict

This is a five-star salad.

Blackberry Pie Bars

This recipe is nabbed and adapted from Annie's Eats. When I saw the berries nestled in the shortbread crust with tart yogurt filling and buttery crumb topping, I had to make these bars. I added some spices and cut the sugar in the original recipe by half. The bars were still as sweet as pie.  

 for a 9 × 17 pan

feeds quite a lot of people, as the bars have so much butter, you'd topple over were you to eat more than one serving

Ingredients 

3 cups pastry flour
¾ cup sugar
dash salt
zest of one lemon
3 sticks butter, cold

4 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup Greek yogurt
12 Tbsp pastry flour (I'm sure there's a more effective cup measurement)
dash salt
1 tsp or more of cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
a few flutterings of freshly grated nutmeg
hint of allspice
juice of one lemon
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. almond extract
30-32 oz. blackberries (two large crates and one small, plus a handful more, if desired)

sugar and cinnamon for topping 

Process

Preheat the oven to 350.

Grease the baking pan.

In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, salt, and lemon zest.

Slice the butter, then add to the bowl with the dry ingredients. Process with an implement or with your bare hands, Dothraki-style, until you get a uniform pebbly consistency.

Take out 1 1/2 cups of the mixture and put in a smaller bowl. Put bowl in freezer.

Pour the rest of the mixture into the pan and press to form an even layer of crust along the bottom and sides.

Bake 12-15 minutes, until light golden.  Let cool at least 10 minutes before adding filling.

In another bowl, combine eggs, sugar, yogurt, flour, salt, spices, lemon juice, vanilla, and almond extract. Whisk until smooth.  Gently stir in the blackberries with a spatula.

Spread the filling over the crust in the baking pan.

Take the topping mixture from the freezer. Mix some sugar and cinnamon together and fluff  into the topping mixture. Pour the topping over the filling so that it is roughly uniform.

Bake 45-55 minutes, until the top is beginning to brown and the bars are just set.

Let cool completely on a rack.  Chill for a few hours or overnight to firm up before slicing and serving.

Notes

• It would be interesting to try this with lemon, orange, or vanilla Greek yogurt.
• The original recipe called for sour cream as an alternative to yogurt, but these bars are so rich, I wouldn't go there. The yogurt provides a medicinal tang to balance the sweetness.
• These bars may end up gooey toward the center of the pan. This caused my boyfriend to refer to them unflatteringly as "bubbling mush." That is some TASTY mush that anyone but a killjoy would want to eat.

Verdict

3 stars--these will be lapped up by everyone at your picnic, office party, or brunch. However, they're not "alternative" enough for me to get wildly excited about them. Throw in some flax, and we're golden.