Blackberry Cobbler: A Taste to Take You Home

Hot sun, prickling vines, tangy taste, buckets of shining black berries. Berry picking in July and August when the days are long and languid, and the berries hang heavy and ripe in the vines. What better way to use them than in an old-time cobbler?

There are several ways to make cobbler. I've had some that are like an upside-down cake, others like a strawberry shortcake. I still make it like my English mother made it, and it's my favorite. Served with milk or vanilla ice cream, it's hard to beat for a sweet summer treat.

Mom's blackberry cobbler is easy to make, even easier to eat. The topping is really just sweetened biscuit dough, mixed a little thinner that you would to make biscuits. You may want to adjust the amount of sugar in both the topping and the berries, depending on your own taste. This recipe doubles easily; if you double it, use a 10”x14” pan for baking, and allow extra time to bake.

3 tablespoons shortening, butter or margarine
1 ½ cups self-rising flour
1 tablespoon sugar (more or less to your taste)
about ½ cup milk

4 cups blackberries (or substitute other fruit), washed and cleaned
½ cup sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch or flour (to thicken)

butter (to dot over the filling before adding the topping)

Berry filling:
Spread the berries evenly in the bottom of a 9”x9” square pan. Sprinkle about ½ cup sugar mixed with the cornstarch or flour over the berries, and stir lightly with a spoon to coat the berries.

Topping:
Mix 1 tablespoon sugar with 1 1/2 cups of self-rising flour. Cut 3 TBSP shortening or butter into the flour mixture with a pastry blender or fork. Stir in milk, about 50 strokes with the fork. (Don't stir too much or your topping will be heavy.) Drop the dough by spoonfuls on top of the berry mixture.

Bake at 400 degrees for 25-30 minutes, or until the topping is golden brown. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream, or with milk.

Other things to do with blackberries: make wine, freeze for winter cobblers, eat with sugar and cream, eat fresh, make blackberry muffins, make a quick sauce by cooking blackberries with sugar, water and corn starch and serve over ice cream, waffles, or pancakes, make a blackberry pie, use the juice from your frozen berries to dye Easter eggs…. And if that’s not enough, you can wait for spring to pick the leaves just before the plants blossom and use the leaves to brew some blackberry leaf tea.