Baking For Dummies (Why Cobbler Is Like Concealer...)

There is a short list of things I do well in this life: cooking, singing, dancing, reviewing contracts, listening, and, on a good day, making my friends and family laugh.  Note this list does *not* include BAKING.

It's not that I don't love baked goods, but I grew up in a home where dessert most days was fresh fruit - peeled, cut just so, and neatly arranged for company, or just peeled and/or cut and taken directly from the hand of the handler and munched indiscriminately if no one was watching. We would pick up the occasional napoleon or fruit tart from the patisserie, but bake we did not.

The other thing is that I am a practical kind of gal, and cooking was, if nothing else, a very useful pursuit that allowed for efficiency, substitution and improvisation.  Baking, on the other hand, always seemed to me an exercise in folly what with all the precise measurements and mise en place and list of ingredients and equipment I never seemed to have on hand and all that BAKE time...

But then one day I had all this leftover bread that had gotten too stale to eat, and conservationist that I am, I resolved to make bread pudding.  At last a baking recipe after my own heart: short and practical ingredient list (Who doesn't have milk, eggs, butter and sugar on hand?), short prep time, and of course the very efficient idea of repurposing an ingredient that would otherwise have gotten canned. 

From that day, I realized that there were indeed baking recipes for pragmatists like me, and every once in a while, when inspiration (sweet tooth) and situation (main ingredient already in pantry or fridge) collide, I will bust a Betty Crocker and bake something like this here cobbler:

What to do with a week old basket of blueberries
and a handful of frozen strawberries.

Berry Cobbler

Serves 4-5 over ice cream, 2-3 eaten by itself

Berry Mixture

- 1 small basket of blueberries (I think it was 4.4 ounces.)

- 6 strawberries cut in quarters (fresh or frozen)

- 1 teaspoon sugar (2 if berries are extra tart)

- 1/8 teaspoon salt

- 2 teaspoons flour

Stir gently until berries are
coated with dry mixture.

Streusel Topping

- 2 Tablespoons butter cut into cubes

- 3 Tablespoons flour

- 5 Tablespoons brown sugar

- 1 teaspoon cinnamon

- 1/4 teaspoon salt (or 1/2 if using unsalted butter)

Get in there with
your hands...

...and mush it up til it
looks like cookie dough.

1) Preheat oven to 425F.

2) Make streusel topping and put in freezer while mixing berries in a baking dish, 5 - 10 minutes. This gives the butter a chance to re-solidify before baking, otherwise the topping will spread too much in the baking process.  I used a Pyrex bowl, but if you're using a pie dish, stack the berries in the middle of the dish, leaving about a 1.5 inch margin around the sides.  (It's a small recipe.)

3) Spread streusel topping over berries:

4) Pop that sucker in the oven for 25-30 minutes or until it looks like:

Bubbly berry juices thickened by the flour. Sweet,
lightly salted and slightly crunchy streusel topping.

5) Serve over vanilla bean ice cream (or don't).

And THAT, folks, is how berry cobbler makes a crap baker like me appear a little less crappy.

shinae