I love cobblers. And this is the season to do them up right when you use all those luscious stone fruits and berries for fillings in summer; in the fall use apples and pears.
Cobblers are truly an old-fashioned American dessert creation. The French have nothing like it except clafouti, which is more custardy than cobblery. The British love their crumbles and puddings.
But as a purely American invention cobblers are akin to be the lazy man’s or woman’s pie since they are often less complicated to prepare than pies.
There are several types of cobbler depending on the style of topping: pastry, biscuit, crumbles and batter puddings, the latter often being the most unusual.
I’ve written about cobblers often here. Just put “cobbler” in the Golden Dish search box and a whole host of cobbler recipes will come up.
Last week, Snell Farm at the Portland Farmer’s Market had sour cherries, the only vendor to have them so far. But at this Saturday’s market, according to Snell, their supply is gone—not a plentiful year for those wonderful sour cherries.
Uncle’s Farm has generally been the biggest vendor of cherries at the Portland market, though he still hasn’t brought them to market, saying “They’re coming.” I hope so because I usually buy as many as I can to freeze and store over the winter.
Instead of the usual pie, I made a sour-cherry cobbler a few days ago. This version is more like a deep dish pie without all the frills. I had a few high-bush blueberries leftover from an earlier time and I added them to the cobbler mix. Blueberries and sour cherries are a great combination.
You’ll need about 2 to 3 pints of cherries to fill a standard size cobbler or pie. That translates to 4 to 5 cups of pitted cherries. I have two pitters that pit 4 cherries at a time, so it goes quickly.
I’ve always used my standard flaky pastry for all my pies, relying on butter and lard to deliver that great flakiness. Lately I’ve been finding butter-lard pastry to be too rich and I’ve been using either all shortening, all lard, all butter or butter and shortening. If you’re making a shortening or lard crust and a tablespoon or two of butter to the dough to get a touch of butter flavor.
Sour cherry cobbler
Ingredients
- Double crust pastry
- 4 cups pitted sour cherries
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 3 tablespoons corn starch or tapioca flour (available at Hannaford from Bob's Red Mill)
- 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
- A few squeezes fresh lemon juice
- A few gratings on a microplane of lemon zest
- 4 tablespoons butter
- More butter for glazing
- Turbinado sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
- Pastry.Prepare a recipe for a double pastry to have two disks, one slightly larger than the other to fill a baking dish, either 7 by 7 or 8 by 8 or similar size. Chill the dough, wrapped in plastic for at least 1 hour before rolling out.
- Roll out the larger disk and fit it into the baking dish, patting to cover the bottom and sides, with an overhang of about 1 inch. Chill while you prepare the filling.
- Filling. Put the cherries in a large mixing bowl. Add the sugar and cornstarch or tapioca flour and gently mix with your hands. Add the almond extract, lemon juice and zest, mixing gently with your hands. Let sit for 5 minutes before putting in the pastry case.
- Put the cherry filling into the pie shell. Dot the top with the butter. Roll out the top crust and place over the cherries, folding the overhang under to form a decorative border. Brush the top with melted butter and sprinkle a tablespoon or two Turbinado sugar over the top.
- Put on a foil-lined baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes. Lower the oven temperature to 375 degrees and bake for an additional 45, rotating the pan halfway through.
- The top should be nicely brown and the filling should be bubbling nicely. If necessary bake for an additional 5 to 10 minutes. Before serving, allow to rest for 30 minutes or longer. Serve with vanilla ice cream.
