Sweet Melissa Sundays: Bear's Peach (and Strawberry) Cobbler

If there is a dessert that I associate with summertime it would most definitely be cobbler. I grew up eating peach and blueberry cobblers all summer long -- to the point that I don't really like them that much anymore. You see, in Texas (the Texas that I know, at least) peach and blueberry seasons are made for cobblers, and they're the standard dessert at any barbecue or backyard dinner. This might explain why cobblers in Texas are batter based, not biscuit topped.

Rather than messing with the pesky biscuit dough, batter cobblers are made by mixing up a batter from the usual list of suspects: flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon (if you're my dad then you'll get funky with the spices, not necessarily a good thing), and milk. While the oven is preheating, you put a 9x13" pan in with a stick of butter (maybe more depending on how you feel about butter) and you let the butter melt. Meanwhile, you've mixed your batter together. Pan with melted butter comes out of the oven, batter goes on top of butter, fruit on top of batter, back in the oven to bake. The batter rises up around the fruit and the result is a cobbler. It must be served with Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla ice cream (actually, in my family we go the Vanilla Bean route, always have), any other brand of ice cream would be unthinkable.

As much as I love this cobbler, I do like a little variety in my life, and a few years ago I tried to start introducing a renegade cobbler -- the biscuit crust cobbler -- into the cobbler rotation. People ate it, but it was always sort of the red-headed stepchild of the cobblers. I actually prefer the biscuit top (pretty much treason for a Texan) and I was excited to see this recipe pop up as Andrea's pick for this week's Sweet Melissa Sunday. I had some strawberries that I got at the farmer's market last week that really needed to find a good home so my cobbler is a peach and strawberry cobbler. I didn't have a lemon so there's no lemon in this dessert aaannddd, I forgot the cornstarch so it's a little runny. Oops.


This cobbler is absolutely fantastic, even in its runny, lemonless state. I think that I just love cooked peaches and, for me, the fruit was the best part. The biscuits were very tender and seriously good but the fruit stole the show. I used about 1/3 of a cup of sugar, rather than the 3/4 cup that the recipe called for because my fruit was really sweet to begin with. If you'd like the recipe, check out Nummy Kitchen and see Andrea's fantastic blog.