BLOG POST MOTHER'S DAY BLACKBERRY PEACH COBBLER

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MOTHER'S DAY BLACKBERRY PEACH COBBLER 

It is Mother’s Day Weekend. To feel closer to my Mom when I miss her, I cook something.

My grandmother, Janie, whom I called Granny, is my namesake. Or am I hers? I am named for her.

Granny taught me to bake my first cake. I was five or six.

I still remember the recipe:

1 cup of butter

2 cups of sugar

3 cups of flour

4 eggs

Add a little milk, but not too much and do not beat the batter too long: it would make the cake tough.

We mixed the items one by one and we beat the mixture with a big spoon and …woman power. This was 1959 in the summer. We had electricity, but no luxuries like mixers or AC. Even if we had had such things, it would have been too expensive to use them.

While the batter was resting a bit, we prepared the pan. We applied Crisco – white lard—and then sprinkled flour and turned the pan around and shook it so that it the Crisco was well coated with the flour. Then, we put the batter into, what I now know, is an angel cake pan.

The pan had a cylinder in the center attached  to a bottom that was removable. I used to marvel that the batter did not leak out: it did not.

Then, we put the cake in the oven and went out on the front porch for coffee. Granny drank her coffee. But I had coffee too. She had these lovely tiny teacups. They held, perhaps 2 ounces, if that. 

My "coffee" was evaporated milk with spoonsful of sugar and drops of coffee. However, my coffee looked like hers: café au lait. 

She was café au lait, and so am I.

As I write this I am wondering: is that why I am a coffee drinker? My mom did not drink coffee. 

I am not sure if any of my siblings drink coffee. But I am a daily at least one cup and most often two cups. I do not use sugar anymore, but I want my coffee to look… café au lait.

This morning, I wanted one of my comfort foods that Granny used to make for me: blackberry cobbler. But... I had no blackberries. 

Last year-- or even three months ago--I would have just jumped in the car, gone to the 24-hour grocery store and bought frozen blackberries. But this is the Coronavirus Pause.

So, no 24-hour grocery store and since I am on self-quarantine, no blackberries for me. Then, it occurred to me: I have peaches!

Mama made peach cobbler. Now THAT was comfort food too.

 Mama’s peach cobbler combined the best of both worlds.

Granny’s blackberry cobbler was made with three simple ingredients: blackberries, sugar, and water, with dumplings added. 

      The blackberries were freshly picked from Granny’s garden. Oh, what fun that was! 

Sunshine light breeze and singing birds while Granny and I – just us two—picked blackberries VERY CAREFULLY to avoid the tiny sharp fine briers that come along with the berries. 

When we had perhaps 3 or 4 cups of berries, we washed them. Into the large pot they went.  We added sugar, probably 2 cups, and just enough water to cover them, and to allow the sugar to turn to syrup. 

Granny made biscuits from scratch. I am not the patient type so that is not something I learned to do. 

But my mother’s idea was to do some things from scratch and then enhance them. So, I use canned biscuits for my dumplings.

So, this morning,  I poured canned peaches into the big pot; I think you would call it a Dutch oven. I poured a cup of sugar into a Pyrex measuring cup, added water and heated it in the microwave for 2 minutes, 30 seconds at a time, checking it in between.

     I had not done it that way before. But I am a scientist, so I knew it would work. I did not know how long it would take; so, in this , I took my time. I am working on developing patience, see?

     While the sugar water was turning to syrup, I put the canned biscuits in a layer on my cutting board. I cut each one into six pieces. 

     I started out flattening them and rounding them into thin dumplings by hand. I like doing that sometimes. 

And moms,  and Grams, this is something that small CLEAN hands would delight to do, to help you cook.

But, my patience today only goes so far. So, I used my metal cylindrical water bottle as a rolling pin . 

I flattened the rest of the cut up biscuit pieces and put them into the pot with the peaches, along with the simple syrup that the sugar water cooked in the microwave had turned into. I added some butter, perhaps one fourth of a stick of butter. 

I started out cooking the mixture in the Dutch oven. But I have more experience with and much prefer cooking with gas. You have heard that expression?  "Cooking with gas"?  

If you were born in the 1950’s you have. But it means, for you younger readers,  NOW you are COOKING! 

Gas is preferred; but you use what you have. Twice I had to remove the pot and allow it to cool a little  because it was “cooking too fast.” 

I let it cool a bit and then I put it back on the burner.  But I was not going to do that every 15 minutes, so plan B. 

I lined a baking pan with aluminum foil and poured—yes, poured—the hot mixture into the pan. I used a large spoon for the first spoonful, but here again, impatience. 

I, carefully ,with mitts,  poured the mixture AWAY from myself into the pan. I added butter, cut into pats, to the bottom of the pan.  Then, I put the pan into the, oven set at 350 degrees. I baked it for 45 minutes, or as Mama would say, "till it was lightly browned"

.

Now, if you like cobbler the way Mama made it, you would need a pre-made pie crust. Not the ones that come with pans but the kind that is next to the canned biscuits and comes in a roll.

Here is what I do:  I take the first roll and lay it into half the baking pan. Repeat with the other one. 

Using a butter knife cut off the excess dough. That is what you do if you are using an oblong baking pan. 

If you are using a pie pan, prep the pan by using flour plus spray cooking oil.  In this case, you use only one crust on the bottom of the pan.

     Put the crust in the prepared pan. DON’T cut off the excess crust. 

     Instead crimp it using your fingers into ridges all around the pan. When you do that,  your guests will marvel at your delicious “home-made pie”,  because,  it will look so much better than the crusts that come frozen in the aluminum pie pans. Your crust will also taste better.

By the way: your pie is home-made. You made it, right? You made it at home, right? Well, there you go.

You could also, if you like two crust pies, use the second pie crust to place on top of the pie pan containing your peaches and dumpling mixture over the bottom pie crust. Press the two crusts together crimping them around the edge of the pie pan.  

Finally, as another alternative, you can eliminate the dumplings and use the peaches and sugar as the filling between two pie crusts. 

OR, you can, for the top of the pie, get real fancy (looking). Put  the top crust  on your cutting board, and using a sharp knife cut  it into strips about an inch or so wide.   With these strips of dough, you can make a cross hatch top crust.  

I have done that occasionally, but generally speaking the generous crimping around the pie pan edge makes enough of a “home-made” impression.  Bake uncovered in a 350-degree oven for 45 minutes or until lightly browned. 

Allow to cool … it will be VERY HOT, even  if it does not appear so.  So, allow it cool thoroughly. No point in spoiling your treat with scalded lips!

You can always warm it more if you like.  And, of course, some of us will be topping it with ice cream, or Redi Whip.

Thank you for walking down memory lane with me. Thank you, Mama. 

Thank you Granny. Miss you both.  Love you both.

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