Cherry Cobbler – Food to heal your soul.

Heralding the end of the season, the price of cherries dropped suddenly a couple of weeks ago. Given that I had a virgin cherry stoner, purchased on the last French holiday, I thought it time to lay my hands on half a kilo of these delectable treats. The plan was to prepare a simple Cherry Cobbler. A quick trawl of the Internet, revealed thousands of recipe options. As is my way, I decided to meld a number of these into something approaching a reasonable concoction.

Some used tinned cherries. Some used far too much sugar. Some used far too little fruit. The others all seemed to let themselves down in one way or other. Too much butter here, too complex a recipe there. I gleaned what I could from them all and decided to go my own way. This recipe is simple and it works. It will feed six to eight after a decent main course.

The ingredients, cobbled together for the photo, of course.

Ingredients

• 220 grammes of butter
• 140 grammes of flour
• 220 grammes of sugar
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• 225 ml of milk
• 500 grammes of cherries
• Handful of flaked almonds
• Icing sugar to dust

Heat the oven to 180º C (360º F). Put the butter into a 30 cm (11 inches) square baking dish and pop it in the oven. I’m sure this will work in other sizes too. That is the size of my baking dish.

The dish is in fact clean, just very old and well-worn. Somewhat like myself.

Wash, dry and de-seed the cherries using a cherry stoner. Every good kitchen has one!

The unused cherry stoner, just before going into action.

Side note on stoners: A stoner limps along the street, wearing only one shoe. He meets a fellow stoner who remarks “Hey Man, lost a shoe?” The stoner replies “No man. Found a shoe.” Sorry about that one. 

In a bowl, mix together 125 grammes of the flour, 170 grammes of sugar and the baking powder. Add the milk, stirring to form a batter.

There’s no need to sieve the ingredients. Like with children, any imperfections can be beaten out.

When the butter has melted, Take the dish out of the oven and pour in the batter mixture.

No need to stir things. Let the batter and butter be mellow together. Like two stoners, perhaps.

Add the remaining sugar and remaining 20 grammes of flour to a bowl and add the cherries. Toss to coat.

Stones gone and tossed in flour and sugar. It was hard not to eat them raw.

Drop the cherries into the batter.

Spot the flying cherry! Last few of the fruit get dropped in to the batter.

Place the cobbler into the oven and bake for 50 minutes. Add the flaked almonds after 40 minutes or so. It’s cooked when a skewer, toothpick or knitting needle can be inserted and removed cleanly. Don’t use all three.

The finished cobbler. If you are going to have it cold, let it cool and sprinkle with icing sugar.

Serve with a scoop of ice cream or dollop of cream.

This delicious cobbler will heel your sole, if you will pardon the awful pun.