Peach Cobbler

I’m not really a big fruit eater, but if you give me enough sugar and a yummy crust, I’ll eat pretty much whatever you put inside of it – peaches, apples, rocks… A few years ago, though, a friend’s peach tree had a rockin’ year. He brought me two large, brown grocery bags FULL of peaches. I had to do something with them before they went bad, so I decided to start experimenting with different peach cobbler recipes I’d found. After a few disasters, I finally picked and chose between several recipes and came up with something we both liked.

Filling Ingredients

  1. 5 decently-sized peaches (if you have small peaches, use six)
  2. 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
  3. 1 tsp cinnamon
  4. 3/4 cup brown sugar
  5. 1 Tbsp flour (to thicken things up a bit)

Crust Ingredients

  1. 1 cup flour
  2. 1/4 cup brown sugar
  3. 1/2 tsp baking soda
  4. 1 tsp baking powder
  5. 4 Tbsp butter, cut into small chunks
  6. 2/3 cup buttermilk

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
  2. Blanch your peaches then slice them. (Directions for blanching peaches at the bottom of this recipe.)
  3. In a bowl, combine the remaining filling ingredients with the sliced peaches and mix thoroughly.
  4. In a well-buttered casserole dish (9X9 or 8X8), spread the peach mixture evenly and bake for ten minutes.
  5. While your peaches are baking, combine all of the dry ingredients for the crust into a clean bowl. Add the butter and mix with your fingers until your crust takes on a coarse, crumb-like texture.
  6. Stir in the buttermilk until you make a soft dough. (It will be pretty wet, so don’t panic on me.)
  7. When your peaches are finished, take them out of the oven and drop spoonfuls of dough on top of the peaches until you get at least most of the top covered in a fairly consistent manner.
  8. Return peaches to oven and bake until the fruit is bubbly and your crust topping is beginning to brown. This takes about twenty minutes.
  9. Serve with vanilla ice cream! YUM!!!

How to blanch peaches:

  1. Bring a pot of water to a boil.
  2. Submerge a peach fully in the water for 30 seconds, then remove peach with slotted spoon and dunk in a bowl of ice water.
  3. Roll the peach around in the ice water for 10 seconds, then remove with slotted spoon.
  4. The skin on the peach should scrape right off with your fingers if it’s a ripe peach. If not, you might have to use a knife to get some of the more stubborn bits of skin off of the peach.