Fruity and Filling-Apple Berry Cobbler

I fancied making a dessert for after dinner, but I was a bit short of time, and ingredients to be honest (I’m due a supermarket visit). I often seem to leave it till the last minute before deciding that dessert would be nice. So, with my fairly limited choice of ingredients, and my even more limited time available, what should I make?

Well, I’d found a peach berry cobbler recipe which was supposed to be cooked on a camp fire. Now, I wasn’t about to build a fire in the back yard. We are English and have never really understood the North American campfire thing-despite my long and successful career in the Girl Guides when I was a teenager-but I thought it would work ok in the oven. It looked pretty simple to do and would fit in my short timeline. I didn’t have any peaches to use but a couple of eating apples would make an acceptable substitute. My berry fruits were frozen, but a quick zap in the microwave, on reduced power, fixed that. So, it was a plan. I’ll give my converted recipe, for 2-4 people, depending on appetite.

The Recipe:

Two small eating apples, peeled and chopped

1½ cups frozen mixed berry fruits, thawed*

90 g/ 3 oz granulated sugar

1½ tbsp. cornstarch/cornflour

1 tbsp lemon juice

½ tsp vanilla extract

Pinch salt

½ cup/65 g/2 oz all-purpose (plain) flour

50 g/ 2 oz/ ¼ cup/ ½ stick butter, cold, cut into pieces

1 tbsp granulated sugar

1 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

65 ml/ ¼ cup buttermilk**

½ tsp vanilla extract

• * my mix was raspberry, blackberry and blueberry. Fresh berries, of a similar mix, would also work.
• ** of course I had no buttermilk, so made it by adding lemon juice to milk, 1 tsp of lemon juice made up to 250 ml/1 cup with milk (reduce quantities, accordingly) and left to stand for a few minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350˚F/180˚C/Gas 4.

In a large bowl, mix together the apples, berries, 90 g granulated sugar, cornstarch, lemon juice and vanilla extract. Transfer to a suitable baking dish (note, for a camp fire the recipe recommends a cast iron skillet but for the oven I used a Pyrex bowl). Set aside.

Fruity mix

Place the flour, granulated sugar (1 tbsp), baking powder and salt in a large bowl and whisk to combine.

Whisk well to combine thoroughly

Add the butter and rub in with your hands to incorporate, until the butter pieces are pea-sized. Then add the buttermilk and vanilla, and stir until just combined. Spoon onto the top of the fruit mixture. Sprinkle a little more sugar over the top.

I found the cobbler mixture to be a bit sloppy and it didn’t really cover the whole of the fruit. Well, this didn’t look that good, but never say die. It went into the oven, uncovered, and I hoped for the best.

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Looked a bit like rice pudding…

The camp fire version specifies that it is to be covered with foil for cooking and states that it will be about 20 minutes before the biscuit mixture is cooked through and the fruit is bubbling. I didn’t really know for the oven but kept an eye on it. It seemed to take about 25-30 minutes before the fruit was nicely bubbly and the topping browned.

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Fresh out of the oven

Well, it certainly looked a lot better coming out than it did going in!

The cobbler was crisp and the fruit hot and syrupy. I served it with a dollop of thick cold cream and it went down very nicely. Definitely worth remembering when in a bind for pudding.

Take Two Apples-Eve’s Pudding

I’m fussy about apples. I enjoy a crisp, sweet, almost tart apple but am not fond of those that feel ‘mushy’ when you bite in, so I loathe Golden Delicious, Red Delicious and their ilk. I really like Honeycrisp, but they are horribly expensive right now, Ambrosia, Pink Lady, Juici, etc. I thought I liked Royal Gala, but a recent purchase put me off them. So, I had two apples from the batch that I knew I wouldn’t eat, not raw. What to do with them?

Normally, my go-to would be an apple crumble or apple crisp, but I fancied trying something different, so I dug out an old recipe from my collection, for Eve’s Pudding. It’s a recipe I found when we lived in the UK, so it starts with ‘peel and slice 1lb of Bramley apples’! Ah, the Bramley, the best cooking apple anywhere (not really one for eating, though). Now we live in North America, no-one seems to understand the concept of a baking apple, one that you can’t really eat raw, and you never ever see Bramleys. They really do make the best apples for pies and the like, keeping their form and taste through stewing and baking. I suppose the closest we get would be a Granny Smith. I have a soft spot for Bramleys since the first tree was grown in the village of Southwell, in Nottinghamshire, after a young girl planted an apple pip in her garden-and, of course, we used to live in Nottingham. Anyhow, Bramleys will always need a preliminary cook, stewing in a little water and then adding sugar, before incorporating them in a pie.

The positive to using an eating apple is that you can generally skip the stewing phase, especially using a softer apple like Royal Gala. That makes it a quicker dish to prepare. In this case I just peeled and cored the two apples, and added pieces to a greased 6 in diameter glass oven dish. To make it more interesting, and why not, I added a 1/4 tsp of cinnamon, a handful of sultana raisins and 3 tsp of raw sugar granules, and added 3 tsp of water, too.

Apples, raisins, sugar, cinnamon and water

Eve’s Pudding is topped with a light sponge, made with equal amounts of soft margarine, granulated/caster sugar and self-raising flour, and a single large egg, very simple. The sponge mix is placed on the top of the apple layer, then the whole thing placed in the oven to bake.

Eve’s Pudding, ready to bake

The pudding is ready when the sponge is risen and golden, about 20-30 minutes. The pud is best served hot, with cream, custard or even ice cream, as we did. I put a generous scoop of caramel fudge ice cream with each portion, and it went down very well.

Just out of the oven

Fluffy sponge, fruity layer

A healthy portion

A la mode!

The recipe

I will give you the original UK version, and my amended version. This serves 3-4 people (or two, with very healthy appetites!)

Original	Amended
1 lb/400 g Bramley apples, peeled and sliced	2 eating apples, peeled and sliced
2 tbsp sugar	Handful sultana raisins
	¼ tsp cinnamon
	3 tsp raw or demerara-type sugar
	3 tsp cold water
2 oz/50 g caster sugar	2 oz/50 g granulated sugar
2 oz/50 g soft margarine	2 oz/50 g soft margarine (Imperial)
1 egg, size 2	1 egg, large
2oz/50 g self-raising flour	2oz/50 g self-raising flour (Cake and Pastry flour)

Preheat the oven to 180 C/350 F/gas 4, although I did set mine to 350F convection (fan), because I was cooking something else that needed a slightly higher temperature, but it worked out fine anyway.

If using the original recipe, place the sliced cooking apples into a saucepan with a little water, and stew until tender. Add the 2 tbsp sugar and place the stewed apples into a prepared, greased oven dish. if following the amended version, toss the cut apple slices with the raw sugar, cinnamon and raisins, transfer to a greased oven dish and add the water.

Cream the margarine and sugar, using an electric hand mixer, until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and then add the flour, beating until incorporated. Layer the cake mixture over the apples, place the whole in the oven and bake until risen, firm and golden in colour. The recipe gives 30 minutes for this, but at the slightly higher temperature I was using it took about 20 minutes. Serve immediately, with your preferred ‘side’.

It made a nice change to apple crumble, and was almost as easy to make. I’ll keep the recipe handy for the next time I buy the wrong apples!

Eve’s Pudding, with lashings of ice cream!

 

For those without self-raising flour handy, it can be substituted with plain/all-purpose flour mixed with baking powder at a ratio of 2 tsp baking powder to 150g/6 oz/ 1 cup flour. Whisk or sieve the two together, to make sure that the baking powder is evenly distributed through the flour, before measuring out the amount needed for the recipe.