SUMMER SAVER
Any fruit can be a cobbler in this Virginia Willis classic Southern recipe.
When I make dessert, I tend to have a plan. I’d rather save the improvising and fridge cleaning for savory preparations.
This cobbler, however, might go a long way toward loosening me up in the sweets department. First published in The Washington Post as Meme’s Blackberry Cobbler a decade ago, it was a gem just waiting to be rediscovered.
The recipe comes from chef, cookbook author and Southern food expert Virginia Willis, who included it in her book “Bon Appetit, Y’all” the same year. Willis fondly recalls going on long road trips with her grandparents, during which she and her grandfather would forage for berries that they would bring back to her grandmother — the Meme of the original recipe name — to bake into a cobbler in their camper.
But you don’t have to forage for wild blackberries to make this cobbler (if you can, lucky you). The farmers market or your refrigerator will do quite nicely. At this time of year, Willis says the recipe is particularly well-suited to stone fruit and berries, although she is not a fan of cooked strawberries. In the three or four times I have made this, I came to the conclusion that the more the merrier, so my favorite combination involved peaches, apricots, cherries and blueberries. At other times of year, you can use defrosted frozen fruit. As long as your total amount of fruit is about 4 cups, you should be set.
“It’s infinitely agreeable,” Willis says. She has tweaked her own recipe in a variety of ways beyond changing the fruit. The topping - essentially a cake batter - can be altered to swap in canola oil for some of the butter, or whole-wheat pastry flour or white whole-wheat flour for the all-purpose flour. Willis has also used rice flour and a gluten-free flour blend. Almond milk is a fine substitute for the whole milk, too. You can play around with the fruit filling, with additions such as citrus zest or juice, crystallized ginger and a tablespoon or two of alcohol.
Moreover, you don’t even have to consider yourself a baker to make this. If you can cut and mash fruit, whisk together a batter and pour it into a pan, then you can make this. “It’s a dump-andstir kind of take,” Willis says.
The one thing you do want to make sure to do is first melt the butter in the oven. This not only liquefies the fat for the batter, but also heats up the baking vessel so the batter immediately starts to set and puff once it’s poured into the pan. With its efficiency at retaining heat, a cast-iron skillet is perfect for this, though Willis says you could also use a 9-by13 Pyrex baking dish or a deep-dish pie plate (whose depth is key, so everything fits). If you’re camping out and cooking over an open fire, a lidded Dutch oven can work almost as well.
However you make this cobbler, a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a cascade of heavy cream will always be welcome.
“I think it really celebrates the fruit of the summer,” Willis says.
What more excuse do you need? Celebrate away.