After being given a lot of Mulberries I had to find a suitable use; suitable meaning relatively easy. Pies have never been among my baking successes and jelly required more equipment and time than I cared to invest. One potential option was a Cobbler. The basic idea of a Cobbler is to bake fruit and batter either by baking fruit poured atop the batter or batter atop the fruit.
None of the several cookbooks I commonly use had a suitable recipe. I settled on a recipe found on Sharon Glasgow’s blog and the result was okay; too sweet and too crisp on the edges, but okay otherwise, meaning it was easy and tasty. With four, three cup containers of Mulberries and the recipe requiring only two cups I decided to take a “Cook’s Illustrated” approach and try making more Cobblers while varying the recipe. The second Cobbler, made with less sugar added to both the berries and the batter, was still too crisp but had more Mulberry flavor and much less added sweetness.
Because Cobblers are very Americana and part of our Colonial heritage I looked more deeply into my modest library of cookbooks. Jeff Smith’s The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American probably should have been the first resource because it contains a wealth of good, basic All-America recipes. By merging both Ms Glasgow’s and Mr. Smith’s approaches I found an alternative that fully satisfied me and will serve well for other seasonal fruits in the future.
| Fruit 2 cups Mulberries
Less than 1/3 cup sugar Other fruits may need to be softened by sautéing and sweetness varied by increasing or decreasing sugar. Batter 1/4 pound (1 stick)
unsalted butter cut into several chunks
1 cup self rising flour Less than 3/4 cup sugar 2 teaspoons vanilla 3/4 cup milk |
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Using a 7 x 11 x 2-inch baking dish put butter chunks in dish and place in oven to melt butter.
- Rinse Mulberries gently, ignoring any stems found on berries as they are edible.
- Pour fruit into a bowl and gently fold in sugar. I prefer my fruit desserts to be less sweet so I use slightly less than 1/3 cup sugar.
- In a second bowl combine flour, sugar, vanilla and milk to make a smooth, thick, pourable batter. Add flour if too thin and milk if too thick. (Yes, you can make your own “self rising flour” but I preferred the convenience of store-bought.)
- When butter is fully melted remove baking dish from oven and carefully pour batter into it, making sure the bottom of the dish is fully covered by the batter.
- Scrape/pour the sugared fruit onto the batter and distribute evenly.
- Bake for 30 to 35 minutes. Top should be golden brown and fruit should not jiggle when shaken.
- Cool on a rack until temperature will allow you to eat it without burning your tongue.
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I suppose you don't have a bundt pan-- however if you did follow the basic rum cake approach to a cake mix -- 4 eggs 1/2 cup oil 1/2 cup buttermilk 1/4 vodka 1/4 cup rum oh throw in some cinnamon vanilla extract and almond extract if you have it on hand also, the rum cake requires an instant pudding mix vanilla .......now if you don't have one,... your own concoction can be had by combining dry powdered milk. powdered sugar and corn starch I used potato starch ( I read that this is what pastry chefs use to elevate the crumb of a cake)...... prepare pan grease and dust /coat with a mixture of pecan meal and brown sugar (gives the cake a bit of a crust,) if you add 2 cups of hand picked blue berries (rabbit eye) from an organic farm in Citra or mulberries mash some up to add to the batter then add the rest which have been washed and dried of course. Well the second time I made this cake-- I separated the eggs to whip the egg whites then folded them into the batter.... I do believe it helped --- good lord this seems involved --- I bet I lost everyone at the instant pudding anyway--- I preheated the oven to 325 yeah 325, baked it for one hour or so -- now I consulted many recipes but I think the Pioneer Woman now she mashed her berries and did the nut crust and I do believe the 325 came from her recipe. Now Paula Deen's Southwest Georgia Pound cake is baked in a cold oven at 325 no preheating and it develops a wonderful crust. The SWG pound cake is on the internet is you choose to check it out. I thought with the nine pounds of blueberries we hand picked I was willing to experiment by adding the fruit to the rum cake. I brought it in to share at work and a co-worker detected the booze --I thought she may have been fooled by the lemon glaze I drizzeld on the finished product. Anyway when confronted with this "Was there booze in the cake?" I said it had buttermilk booze and berries, satisfied I covered several food groups the cake received many compliments. With all the walking on the ABT a few calories from a cake will provide energy.
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