Pie is delicious, no doubt, but it’s also a lot of work. This blackberry-raspberry skillet cobbler—from Dora Charles’s A Real Southern Cook: In Her Savannah Kitchen—has all the summery-sweet perks of pie without so much effort. (It’s ready in 30 minutes!)
“This is such a delicious dessert,” Charles writes, “and it was all an accident. I was making a blackberry cobbler I had high hopes for, and then it turned out I didn’t have enough blackberries. But there were some raspberries, so I swapped those in for a quarter of the blackberries. The result was an intense plum-colored fruit filling and a taste that rocked everyone at the table. I tried it all different ways, with different ratios of blackberry to raspberry. But the original accident was the best.
“When I make this now, it always reminds me of berry picking up in the country, where we’d get buckets of them,” she continues. “The cobbler looks great in a cast-iron skillet, and even better if you drag a spoon through the batter to make an interesting pattern with the gorgeous berry juice.”
Excerpted from A Real Southern Cook: In Her Savannah Kitchen © 2015 by Dora Charles. Photography © 2015 by Robert S. Cooper. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.
10-Minute Strawberry Cobbler for One
Ingredients
Filling
1 stick (8 tablespoons) butter
3 cups blackberries
1 cup raspberries
Grated zest of l lemon, mixed with 2 tablespoons sugar
Batter
1 cup self-rising flour
¾ cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup milk
Heavy cream, for serving
Directions
1. Make the Filling: Preheat the oven to 400°F.
2. Melt the butter in a 9- or 10-inch cast-iron skillet or a 9-x-12-inch flameproof baking dish. Remove from the heat.
3. Mix the berries with the lemony sugar and spread them out in the bottom of the skillet or baking dish. Let them soften for a couple of minutes in the oven, adding a little water if they seem dry.
4. Make the Batter: Meanwhile, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. Stir in the milk—the batter will be thick.
5. Pour the batter over the fruit. It’s fine if it doesn’t entirely cover the fruit. If you like, pull a spoon through the batter to make a streaky pattern with the juices. Bake the cobbler until the fruit is bubbling up at the edges and a toothpick inserted into the “cobbles” on top comes out clean, 18 to 20 minutes.
6. The cobbler will be too hot to eat when it comes out of the oven. Let it cool for up to 30 minutes, then serve warm in bowls with a pitcher of cream to pour over it at the table.
Note: The cobbler is surprisingly good the next day. Reheat it at 350°F until the fruit juices begin to bubble up again.