A Luscious Cobbler

This cobbler was so easy and proved to be a huge hit with Master Chow. And me, too, if I’m totally honest! What’s not to love about warm, sweet strawberries, topped with moist biscuits, with bright notes of orange and lemon in the background? And the color, that brilliant, deep berry red – was fantastic.

The theme of this month’s Sugar High Friday, hosted by Helene of Tartelette, and originally created by The Domestic Goddess, Jennifer, is citrus. I love citrus, but I wanted to do something a bit different and use citrus as a supporting player, so to speak, while taking advantage of all the gorgeous berries showing up in the market. After digging around my recipes, I took inspiration from a recipe by Abigail Johnson Dodge in issue #86 of Fine Cooking magazine. Armed with the recipe and a recent purchase of four pounds of strawberries, I got to work.

This cobbler is definitely on the repeat list – I have to say that I ended up liking it much more than I thought I would, and particularly enjoyed the ratio of biscuits to tons of strawberries. As an experiment, I froze some of the cobbler to see how it would fare. The berries were still great, and the biscuits were very good, just not as good as they were on the same day that I baked the dessert.  Recipe after the jump . . . .

Strawberry-Citrus Cobbler
Adapted from a recipe by Abigail Johnson Dodge in Fine Cooking # 86

Butter a 9 x 13 baking dish – Pyrex is good.
Position a rack in the center of the oven and heat the oven to 350°F.

You can prepare the topping and the fruit (rinsed, drained, and cut but not tossed with the other ingredients) up to 8 hours ahead and pop them in the fridge until it’s time to assemble and bake the dessert.

Sour Cream Cobbler Dough

1 2/3 cups (7 ½ oz.) unbleached all-purpose flour
1/3 cups packed light brown sugar
1 Tbs. baking powder
1/4 tsp. table salt
3 oz. (6 Tbs.) cold unsalted butter, cut into 10 pieces
1 Tbs. finely grated orange zest
2 tsp. finely grated lemon zest
3/4 cup sour cream, chilled
2 to 3 Tbs. of milk (only if needed, to help you pull your dough together)

In a food processor, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, orange zest, lemon zest, and salt. Pulse briefly to blend the ingredients, about 10 seconds. Add the butter pieces and pulse until they are the size of small peas, 5 to 7 one-second pulses. Dump the mixture into a large mixing bowl. Add the sour cream. Using a rubber spatula, gently smear the ingredients together until the flour is evenly moistened and the dough begins to form large, soft, moist clumps. Divide the log into 10 roughly equal round pieces. The dough will be moist, but if it’s crumbly and you have trouble pulling it together, and a tablespoon of milk at a time until you get a cohesive mass. The dough will be sticky and wet.Divide dough into about 10 biscuit-sized pieces. Refrigerate the pieces in the bowl while preparing the filling.

Strawberry Filling

8 cups strawberries, hulled: if small, leave whole; if medium, cut in half; if large, cut in quarters. All fruit should be ripe, well rinsed, and drained.
1/2 to 3/4 cup granulated sugar (use the greater or lesser amount, depending upon the sweetness of the fruit)
1 to 2 Tbsp. All purpose flour
pinch of table salt
1 tsp. finely grated orange zest
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

2 Tbsp. demerara, granulated sugar, or turbinado sugar (optional)

Put the fruit in a large bowl. Toss with the granulated sugar (use less for very ripe, sweet fruit and more for fruit that’s not perfectly ripe and sweet), 1 Tbs. all purpose flour (if your cobbler has any berries in it, use 2 Tbs. flour), and a pinch of table salt. Add the zest and vanilla extract, and gently toss them into the fruit, making sure to mix them in evenly.

Pile the fruit into the baking dish, scraping in any remaining juices or sugar from the bowl, and spread evenly. Remove the pieces of dough from the refrigerator and arrange them randomly on top of the filling, leaving spaces between the pieces. Do not flatten the dough—the large pieces are important for proper and even baking of the filling and topping. If desired, sprinkle 2 Tbs. (optional) of demerara, granulated, or turbinado sugar on top of the biscuits.

Place the baking dish on a sheet pan, preferably lined with parchment paper, foil, or a Silpat. Bake the cobbler until the filling is bubbling and the topping is browned, 50 to 60 minutes. Let sit about 20 minutes to allow the juices to settle. You can serve this cobbler hot or warm (it will stay warm at room temperature for 1 to 2 hours). Serve with lightly sweetened whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, but it really doesn’t need anything!