Fine food
plays a major part in this joyous season, but as hostesses we face a
dilemma. Give family and friends a
memory of a table full of tradition and flavor, or to risk a guilt trip over
the fattening dishes we serve? Especially those desserts! Since holidays sans sweet are an anathema, this year, I
offer you the solution: tasty and lean cobblers.
There is no Thanksgiving in Latin America, but it’s the festivity Latino immigrants
tend to adopt faster than others.
Perhaps it has something to with the glow of food and feasting. My
fondest memories of such holidays are linked to taste and aroma. Not the taste
and aroma of turkey, not my mother´s secret stuffing recipe, not the cranberry
sauce that I still adore. Thanksgiving to me was associated to the word
“gratitude” and gratitude meant “pie”. Pumpkin, apple, sweet potato, and pecan
pies filled November with their sensuality. Yes, their flavor, looks and smells
were better than sex.
Sadly for
us, pies are calorific. They have thick crusts and sometimes lids of dough,
even if it is just a couple of strips positioned there to create the lattice
effect. Within those two sheets of dough lies a stuffing rich in sugars that we
tend to exacerbate with custards and coats of extra sweet marmalade. Just think
of classics like Boston Cream Pie, Key Lime Pie or that horrible (but
scrumptious) habit of serving “Pie à la Mode”, warm and topped with ice-cream.
I have a
dear friend, a former student of mine, who used to take me in for Thanksgiving .
At the time, she was living with her in-laws in a three-floor Brooklyn house.
Her husband´s family came from the South. Their sense of hospitality was drenched
with Southern hearty fares and impressive spreads. I used to come home after those
Thanksgiving’s meals, stuffed like the just eaten turkey, rolling like ping
pong ball, and burdened with a heavy tray of desserts samples. My hosts had so much
food; they had to share the leftovers it with their guests.
They used
to set up a table in the kitchen to locate desserts, and such a bounty Pirate Jack
Sparrow has never seen! Guests were encouraged to bring additional dishes for
that last course. Those contributions
joined other sugary victuals baked at home. On my first visit, being the only
foreigner in such an American occasion, I was in needles and pins. What could I
bring? I ended up making an apricot cobbler. I didn’t know it then, but the cobbler
is as American as Apple Pie.
Pilgrim
Fathers, sorry… Pilgrim Mothers were the brains behind the cobbler. Unable to
make their heavy British puddings in their new land, these early settlers
developed the habit of tossing dumplings on top of vegetable and meat stews.
Eventually they did it over stewed fruit and a dessert was born.
In simpler terms,
a cobbler is a sheet of fruit. You can use pie filling; you can use canned or
fresh fruit. All you have to do is drop
dollops of batter (very light cake batter) creating a sort of cover, but one that lets
you see the bottom layer. Those clumps were originally called “doughboys.” So
American was the dessert that “Doughboy” became the nickname of soldiers that
went abroad to fight The Great War. I guess I´ll have to think of Scott
Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby and John
Gilbert in “The Big Parade,” next time I bake a cobbler.
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| Thick Doughboy on top of cherry ad apricot filing (Photo by The Boreka Diary. Flickr) |
The nice
thing about the cobbler is the control you have over the ingredients. You can
skip sugar, you can add less than the usual amount, you can replace it with
Stevia, agave syrup or whatever artificial sweetener strikes your fancy. A cobbler uses
less butter than a regular pie. And you can avail yourself of margarine or
canola spread. The thing is that you can turn a cobbler into something healthy
and yummy. And for us, the beleaguered elderly cooks, it´s an easy dessert since
we can even cook cobblers on a skillet or casserole and over the stove. No need
to bend or drag heavy trays from the oven.
And now,
let’s get down to business. Here come my favorite cobbler recipes.
THE DOUGHBOYS
Easy
Cobbler Batter
1 cup (one
stick) of melted butter (margarine, or any corn spread)
½ cup of
flour
1 tsp. of
baking powder
1 pinch of
salt
¾ cup of
sugar ( replace it with your favorite sweetener)
¾ cup of
milk
Microwave
the butter until it melts. Sift the dry ingredients, add the milk, stir it and
finally add the melted butter to the mixture. Don´t worry if it’s a bit lumpy
or crumbles. It should be that way.
Spread the filling
on the bottom of a baking tray, one thick (about an inch long) layer. Take the batter
and drop the doughboys on top of the fruit. You can spread the batter like a
pie crust or just make individual clumps that let you admire the fruity
contents.
If you want
to dispense with flour and baking powder (or you are allergic to lactose) turn
your cobbler into a “crisp.”
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| Crisp Crust (photo by Grammar Fascist. Wikipedia Commons.Org) |
Crisp Crust
½ cup of
oats
½ cup of
almond flour
3 spoonfuls
of brown sugar
2
tablespoons of margarine
1 tsp of
cinnamon
Dash of
nutmeg
Mix the
ingredients until you get a crumbly texture. Use the combination to blanket
your fruit.
FILLINGS
There is
only one possible ingredient: fruit.
 |
| Uncooked cobbler (Photo by Chris Young) |
If you’re
going for fresh or canned fruit don’t chop or slice it. Use nice plump halves:
apples, pears, peaches, plums or apricots. Place them face down on the tray
setting them about ¼ inches apart from each other. Squirt some lemon juice on top;
add one tablespoon of brown sugar and two tablespoons of cornstarch. Perhaps a
wee dusting of nutmeg and cinnamon to enhance the flavor. Then let the dollops
fall in the cracks between. Let it go to
the oven for 50 minutes at 350º. After baking, the fruit will be exposed, yet framed
by a golden crust (a friend calls them “nipples”), creating a lovely visual
effect.
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Gluten and Dairy Free Blackberry Cobbler (Photo by Cassidy) |
If you are
working with fresh berries, toss them whole on the tray, unless you are using large
strawberries. Those you slice in half. Spray the fruit with lemon, cornstarch
and spices and proceed to fabricate your cobbler.
If you
going for canned pie filling, dare to be adventurous! Blend apple with blueberry;
cherry with pineapple, and so on.
Talking
about adventurous...how about boozing it up? Add ¼ cup of liquor to the fruit
filling, before cooking it. Whisky or sweet
liqueurs like Amaretto, or Triple Sec, are the best choices.
And now for
something really wild. …so wild it has no name yet. It’s up to you to christen it.
(You´ll need
only three ingredients)
1 bag of
frozen berries (or two if you want to combine different fruits)
1 box of
cake mix (vanilla or white cake)
2 cans of
7-Up, Sprite or Ginger Ale.
Toss the fruit
on a tray. Cover it with the cake mixture. No stirring, no whipping, no fancy
ingredients. Just like that. Open your can and slowly spill the soda on top of
the fruit cake-mixture. Do not stir. Wait a couple of minutes. You´ll see it
bubble like champagne. Toss the mixture inside the oven. Bake 45-50 minutes at
350º.You´ll get the cutest and tastiest cobbler in this world.
So Vintage
Greykittens, I know somewhere above I promised a top-of-the-stove recipe. One
where you don´t need to bend over to pull baking trays from fiery furnaces.
Here it goes:
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| (Photo by Carol from PURESUGAR.NET) |
Skillet Cherry Cobbler
1 can of
cherry pie filling
½ cup of
Bisquick
2 tbs .of
sugar
2 tbs of
skim milk
2 teaspoons
of grated orange zest
¼ glass of
orange juice
Combine the
dry ingredients; add some milk to moisten the dough. Set aside. In the skillet (get
a nice iron cast one) bring to boil the pie filling and the juice. When it’s
nice and bubbly, drop mounds of the batter on top. Reduce heat, cover and let
it simmer for 10 minutes. Lift the lid off and let it simmer for another extra
7 minutes or until the dough is cooked and golden.
By the way, people (can't blame them) do serve the cobbler with custard sauce, whipped cream, or ice cream. Do it at your own risk, I won´t tell on you. Just remember that we are trying to eat healthy here, and that the cobbler is so delicious , it needs no more improvement.
Bake a
couple of cobblers for the holiday dessert. I bet you nobody will miss the pies.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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