The Home Cook: Berry Cobbler

I hope you all had a great 4th of July. I, of course, spent my weekend on cloud nine puttering around the house. By now you've figured out that Tim and I are not social scions. Many holidays are spent just us, milling about the house doing a hodge-podge of weird odds n' ends. Things done include: cleaning closets, updating monthly bookkeeping, movie watching, book reading, errand running and cooking. Watch out for us, we really know how to tie one on. We also watched the neighborhood fireworks extravaganza and have vowed to add to it ourselves next year. (We did tape this spectacular but I didn't realize my camera recorded sound...um...I talk...a lot, mostly using turns of phrase, innuendo and sarcasm unfit for mass public consumption...also the auto focus feature was on and it really shouldn't have been.)

Anyway besides being oppressively dull people for most of the weekend, we cooked a fair amount. Grilled a chicken, made some mac salad, ate some french toast, made some paninis and most importantly for today, tried a new dessert. It started out with a desire to make a tart of some variety. There is a tart pan languishing in my kitchen closet that I most desperately wanted as a Christmas gift...and now that I have one, I haven't used it. Go figure. It was going to be a berry tart and I acquired all the necessary berry tart making necessities...namely berries. Blueberries, raspberries, strawberries & blackberries. I washed the berries, I sorted the berries, I hulled the berries and then I thought...huh, there is no way two of us can eat a 9" berry tart before the raw berries get all smooshy and weird. Time to rethink this.



And rethink and rethink and rethink I did. I needed a tart that had the berries baked. A baked berry tart. Then I found a recipe for a Berry Cobbler....with walnuts...and coconut...and the baked berry tart took a flying leap. This is yet another recipe from the kitchen of Simply Recipes. When don't they have something that looks and tastes magnificent; and magnificent this recipe was. I don't have much first hand experience with berry desserts...I grew up in a more cake, chocolate and frozen desserts family, so this was all new for me. I was worried I'd find the baked berry texture rather nasty or worse it would be a berry mass of unmitigated tartness.

Yeah, you don't need to tell me. Wrong. I was so totally wrong. First of all, a mass of mixed berries bake into the loveliest dark plum shade ever. If I had any kind of purple leanings, I would paint something that color. The unusual topping of nuts and coconut was delicious and such a nice difference from the standard doughy cobbler topping that it easily went from yum to oh-so-delicious. I do believe I am a converted berry dessert fan.

Berry Cobbler with Coconut Walnut Topping
from Simply Recipes

Filling
4 cups mixed berries (i.e. blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, boysenberries, strawberries), fresh or frozen
1/4 cup plus 1 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp instant tapioca
1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

Topping
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
4 Tbsp (1/4 cup) cold, unsalted butter, cut into cubes

Preheat oven to 375°F. Butter a 9x9 inch baking dish.

In a large bowl, mix together the filling ingredients - berries, sugar, tapioca, and lemon juice. Pour into the baking dish.

In a medium sized bowl, stir together the flour, coconut, sugar, walnuts, baking powder and salt from the topping ingredients. Use your fingers to mix in the cubes of butter. Rub the butter into the other ingredients until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs.

Sprinkle the topping over the filling. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until the topping is golden brown and crispy, and the filling is bubbling.

Let cool for at least an hour. Serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

Makes 6 servings.

Cook's Notes:

I used pecans because there is no better nut than the pecan. I dare you to argue.

That would be 6 very healthy sized servings...I bet you could get 8 or so slightly more petite servings.

I used strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries...the seeds of the blackberries were a little off putting.