Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Tuesdays with Dorie - Mixed Berry Cobbler

Today's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Beth from Our Sweet Life. You can find the recipe for this classic dessert on her blog.

I am not a fan of berry desserts and since our berries aren't in season quite yet I decided to use a substitute fruit combination in this cobbler. My sister-in-law had just presented us with a large (very large) bag of fresh rhubarb and so I thought a rhubarb-peach combination might be just the thing for this recipe.

Other than the fruit, I made few substitutions or changes to Dorie's recipe. I did add a touch of cinnamon and nutmeg to the dough and used brown instead of white sugar (mostly because I couldn't find the new bag of white sugar I just bought!!!). In the fruit mixture I increased the sugar quite significantly because I was using rhubarb and I used half brown/half white sugar there (found the bag at last...).

The crust was very thick over the fruit and I wasn't sure how that would turn out. I have to admit that I don't make a lot of cobblers. It's a lot more popular to make crisps in this part of the country so I wasn't sure what to expect. The cobblers I've made in the past have been biscuit cobblers where you kind of dollop the dough on top of the fruit randomly. In any case, I gave it a go and popped it in the oven.

I love Dorie's recipes but I swear her oven must be much less hot than mine. I consistently find that the time's posted in the recipes are far too long for my oven. I either have to decrease the temperature or decrease the time. If I'd cooked this for 75 minutes it would have been burnt to a crisp. As it was, at 50 minutes it was toasty brown.

From a taste perspective, this was lovely. The outside of the crust was wonderfully crisp and the part on the inside by the fruit was soft and doughy. The fruit was just the right sweetness and I'm glad I added a little cinnamon for that extra "oomph". My husband really enjoyed it and he doesn't like rhubarb that much. He wants me to make the crust again with a different fruit combo and for him to make that request is pretty significant. My only complaint was that the fruit was a little too liquidy. I think I would add more starch to the mixture in the future.

Check out the other wonderful concoctions by the Tuesdays with Dorie crowd.

9 comments:

Bumblebutton said...

Nice job with the rhubarb. I just love your little heart!

Anonymous said...

Don't you hate it when you can't find the groceries you JUST BOUGHT? So glad I'm not the only one. ;)

Tonniece said...

Oh my, Thanks for the yummmmmy eye candy, too bad we can't taste test it too. I love rhubarb.

Engineer Baker said...

Rhubarb sounds wonderful in this. I'm guessing that your fruit choices were why it was a bit more liquidy, so berries wouldn't need as much cornstarch. It looks delicious!

Cecilia said...

Oh, what a lovely cobbler! Is that a heart cut in the center? It looks like one.

Anyway, about the oven temp. The baking times that Dorie gives are always too long for me as well, and I'm pretty sure that my oven is running just fine because I have a separate oven thermometer that I use every once and while to make sure the settings are right. Unless the oven thermometer is wrong... I always have to reduce the cooking time by quite a bit and keep an eye on the baking.

Susie Homemaker said...

I do that with the groceries more often than I would like to admit.
beautiful job on the cobbler - love the heart!

Shari said...

I love the rhubarb poking out of the center in that picture! I used rhubarb too!
Shari@Whisk: a food blog

Jules Someone said...

I love love love rhubarb. That looks delicious.

Bungalow Barbara said...

Great idea for the fruit combination! Cobblers are supposed to be a little bit runny, so you can use the biscuit topping to soak up the juice. I agree with Engineer Baker, with juicy fruits like peaches you might need more cornstarch to keep it from being TOO soupy.