There is no more irresistable summer dessert than a simple berry cobbler, served hot from the oven with some good vanilla ice cream. Here’s an easy recipe that you can adapt to whatever fruit happens to be in season. This recipe will serve two, but is easily doubled or tripled for larger crowds. You can make it in one big dish to take to a picnic, or individual ramekins for a more sophisticated presentation. With a little practice, you can pull this together in about 10 minutes, plus 20 for baking. You can also make the dough a bit ahead of time and keep in the refrigerator until you’re ready to assemble the dessert.
Preheat your oven to 375 F/190 C.
- 1 1/2 cups summer berries (any mix of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries you like)
- 1 tablespoon white sugar (adjust depending on the sweetness of your fruit)
- 1 tablespoon Grand Marnier
- 1 teaspoon corn starch
Mix the filling ingredients together and put in a small baking dish – a 6 in. ramekin works well. You can also divide between two 1 cup ramekins if you want to make individual desserts.
Place the following ingredients in the bowl of a food processor:
- 1/2 cup white flour
- 3 tablespoons white sugar
- 1/2 stick chilled butter
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
Pulse these ingredients a few times until combined, but don’t overdo it. The dough should be the texture of course cornmeal. With the food processor running, add 2 tablespoons of heavy cream. As soon as the dough starts to come together, maybe another 10 seconds, stop the blade and scrape the dough onto a clean cutting board or counter top. Pull the dough together into a ball, gathering up any loose crumbs. Pull off chunks of the dough and place on top of the berry filling – cover well, but not completely. If you leave some gaps, the berry juices will bubble up through and caramelize on the crust. Brush the top of the dough with a bit more heavy cream, and sprinkle with granulated sugar.
Place in the oven and bake for about 20 minutes, until the top has puffed and is golden brown.
Serve immediately with vanilla ice cream or heavy cream. If you’ve made it in individual ramekins, you can poke a hole in the top and drop in the ice cream. It’ll melt and blend with the berries and give you a lovely blending of temperatures and textures.
This recipe adapts will to any kind of fruit, but as the crust is extremely delicate, I think it’s best with soft fruits. Try a mix of rhubarb and strawberries – cut the rhubarb into chunks and simmer with a bit of sugar and grand marnier until the rhubarb starts to soften. Then mix in the strawberries before topping and baking. Peaches or apricots are also great in this dish, and you can add a few nuts too, if you like. Slivered almonds or crushed hazelnuts go really well with orchard fruit.
One more note: I find it easier and less of a mess to just make the dough in a bowl with a pastry blender. If you don’t have one, you can probably find it in your local grocery store for about 2.99. They usually have a simple wooden handle with 7 or 8 stiff parallel wires running down below the handle in a semi circle. You mash the wires through the flour and butter mixture until you get course crumbs (you’ll probably have to scrape the butter off the wires a couple of times), then add the cream and mix and gather with a spoon or your hands. Use the same basic process for pie crust or crumb topping. I find that this method gives me much better control than the food processor – it’s very easy to overdo it with the food processor and end up with a tough pastry crust. You also have only one bowl and the pastry blender to clean, rather than the food processor blade, bowl and top, and you don’t have to put the food processor away afterwards.
