Recipe: Try this classic with cherries, peaches or other favorites
The dark cherries have colored the peaches, but they're in there, adding flavor and texture. Debbie Arrington
This cobbler makes the most of summer stone fruit and berries. It mixes and matches what’s on hand. For example, I used two yellow peaches and a pound of late cherries. Colorwise, the peaches tended to blend in with all the red cherry juice, but their flavor and texture added their own distinct plus.
The crust is like sugary drop biscuits. Make sure your baking dish is deep enough for the bubbling fruit as it cooks. When serving, drizzle some of the fruit syrup over the topping. Ice cream or whipped cream is optional.
Summer fruit cobbler
Serves 6
Ingredients:
4 cups fruit (peaches, nectarines, cherries, apricots, strawberries, berries, etc.), pitted
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup butter
1/3 to ½ cup buttermilk or sour milk
Butter for baking dish
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Prepare fruit. Peeling is optional. Cut larger fruit into 1-inch pieces. Halve cherries and strawberries. Mix fruit with brown sugar; set aside.
In a medium bowl, sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Chop butter into small pieces, then blend it into dry ingredients with a fork, pastry blender or two knives. Add just enough buttermilk or sour milk to form a thick sticky dough.
Butter a 2-quart casserole dish. Pour fruit mixture into the buttered dish.
With two spoons, scoop dough into six golf ball-size pieces and place them on top of fruit, spacing dough pieces evenly apart.
Bake cobbler at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until crust is golden and fruit is bubbly. Remove from oven and let cool at least 20 to 30 minutes.
Serve warm with ice cream or whipped cream, of desired.
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Food in My Back Yard Series
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Garden Checklist for week of May 18
Get outside early in the morning while temperatures are still cool – and get to work!
* Plant, plant, plant! It’s prime planting season in the Sacramento area. Time to set out those tomato transplants along with peppers and eggplants. Pinch off any flowers on new transplants to make them concentrate on establishing roots instead of setting premature fruit.
* Direct-seed melons, cucumbers, summer squash, corn, radishes, pumpkins and annual herbs such as basil.
* Harvest cabbage, lettuce, peas and green onions.
* In the flower garden, direct-seed sunflowers, cosmos, salvia, zinnias, marigolds, celosia and asters. Transplant seedlings for many of the same flowers.
* Plant dahlia tubers.
* Transplant petunias, marigolds and perennial flowers such as astilbe, columbine, coneflowers, coreopsis, dahlias, rudbeckia and verbena.
* Keep an eye out for slugs, snails, earwigs and aphids that want to dine on tender new growth.
* Feed summer bloomers with a balanced fertilizer.
* For continued bloom, cut off spent flowers on roses as well as other flowering plants.
* Are birds picking your fruit off trees before it’s ripe? Try hanging strips of aluminum foil on tree branches. The shiny, dangling strips help deter birds from making themselves at home.
* As spring-flowering shrubs finish blooming, give them a little pruning to shape them, removing old and dead wood. Lightly trim azaleas, fuchsias and marguerites for bushier plants.