How to make the perfect peach cobbler – recipe

The Guardian

2 days ago

'If you go to a picnic in the south,' wrote the late South Carolina chef Emily Meggett, 'and there's no peach cobbler, someone's got some explaining to do.' Cobblers, a rustic variety of fruit pie that seems to have originated in the rough-and-ready environs of the American west, are now principally associated with the US south and are, as chef Brad McDonald observes, 'unglamorous' yet 'rarely fail to please'.
As befits frontier food, they're extremely adaptable to a variety of climates and kitchens, too, but, as the southern food critic James Villas once explained, 'no matter how you construct a hot cobbler, the main principle is that the filling should never be either soggy or dried out and the crust must be crisp enough to create a good counterpoint with the soft fruits or berries – not to mention the obligatory scoop of ice-cream on top'. Far easier to pull off than a pie, but more impressive than a crumble, cobblers are a great way to use a bargain tray of overripe or bruised fruit, should you be lucky to come across such a thing.
Peaches, obviously – but peaches in the UK will not usually be as fresh as those in the American south, which means we have to adjust our expectations accordingly. A couple of recipes call explicitly for 'ripe but firm' fruit, which does not mean those cannonballs sold as ready-to-eat in many British retailers; I speak from bitter experience when I assure you that a peach that is crunchy when raw will still be al dente once baked. Though not squashy, the fruit ought to give a little under your fingertips (a good fruit vendor should be happy to pick some out for you, though sadly our supermarkets do not offer that service, so you'll have to take it on trust or do some discreet and gentle squeezing).
That said, even in the south, there's a delightfully bitchy hierarchy of peaches, with Villas instructing the reader of The Glory of Southern Cooking to 'forget most of what you've heard about Georgia peaches. Yes, Georgia peaches are certainly far superior to the pulpy, bitter peaches they grow in California, but where I go for sweet peach perfection is to the South Carolina Piedmont region, intersected by Interstate 77 and, more specifically, to the Peach Tree and other orchards in and around Filbert. Peach fanatics from as far away as Pennsylvania and Kentucky flock to the Peach Tree every summer to see and smell and taste the luscious early belles, white ladies, lorings and indian red clings'. Meanwhile, I head to the greengrocers.
Controversially, I will not be peeling the fruit. Everyone peels the fruit, I know, because they seem to have an aversion to what America's Test Kitchen (ATK) terms 'any unpleasantly leathery bits of skin', but, as with apples, tomatoes and even potatoes, I happen to like a bit of chew – a skinless peach feels like a tinned peach to me, and though tinned peaches have their place (a hotel breakfast buffet), it's not what I'm after here. Plus, a ripe peach is a pain to peel. (I can almost hear the southerners murderously murmuring: 'Bless her heart').
Ripe peaches are a very wet fruit, which proves a problem in recipes such as the one in McDonald's book Deep South, where they're used raw – this proves the first clue to perhaps the most important lesson I learn about peach cobbler: the dish should always be placed on a rimmed baking sheet, because if it can bubble over, you can bet your bottom dollar it will. Cutting the fruit into chunky wedges, as he suggests, rather than slices, is a good start; too thin, and they have a tendency to dissolve into perfumed mush in the oven.
Like ATK , McDonald uses cornflour to thicken those juices (Edna Lewis prefers plain flour) but, to my mind, more muscular action is required to stem the tide. While this shouldn't be a dry dish, equally, too much juice will make the topping soggy. Chef Joe Randall's recipe in the book he co-authored with Toni Tipton-Martin, A Taste of Heritage, marinates his peaches with sugar, flour and spices to draw out the juices, then simmers them until those juices start to thicken – yet with similarly liquid results. I'm beginning to suspect that ATK's claim that 'most of the juices are not released until the peaches are almost fully cooked' is correct.
My multi-prong solution, like ATK's, is to drain off some of the liquid produced by mixing peaches with sugar and leaving them to sit, then to thicken that with cornflour and to pre-bake the fruit before adding the topping, to give that liquid more time to evaporate, as well as to leave enough gaps in said topping to encourage further evaporation.
Everyone uses sugar, naturally, and some in quantities that are a little too much for those not weaned on sweet tea. Randall's dark brown sugar feels a little too treacly for this fresh fruit, but I like the idea of a lighter brown sugar with peaches – it just feels apt somehow. Almost everyone adds butter to their filling – I want to say it's too much, but I'm afraid it does help make the syrup deliciously rich, so omit it at your own risk.
Lewis, or Miss Lewis as she was properly called and is always referred to in her book with Scott Peacock, The Gift of Southern Cooking, also adds a pinch of salt, which, like the lemon juice in Meggett's, Randall's and the ATK recipes, helps to make the peaches taste … peachier somehow. If you happen to have some knocking around, I'd also highly recommend a dash of the almond essence in Villas' recipe – not so much as to make the filling taste nutty, but just enough to enhance the flavour of the almond's close cousin, the peach.
McDonald mixes the peaches with raspberries – which, personally, I don't care for when cooked (they break down completely in the peach juice, but if you like the idea, stick a handful in). She also adds vanilla and cinnamon, which we all like less than Miss Lewis and Randall's nutmeg; peaches and sugar are sweet enough, after all, without enhancing that with cloyingly sweet spices. Randall's ground cloves prove a surprise hit, but one spice feels like quite enough in a place where peaches hardly grow on trees.
I thought I knew what a cobbler was until I started the research for this dish and found myself rolling out a lovely, delicately crumbly pastry for Randall's double-crust version. Peacock helpfully explains that 'in the US south, the term 'cobbler' is applied to a host of baked fruit desserts. To Miss Lewis, 'cobbler' meant a kind of deep-dish pie with fruit baked between a bottom and top layer of pastry … to other southern bakers, a cobbler might have only a top pastry crust. In Alabama, we called anything a cobbler that had fruit covered by a baked topping.' (He goes on to reminisce about 'one of the more distinctive cobblers of my childhood', from a local barbecue joint, that involved 'canned peaches covered with a box of Duncan Hines Yellow Cake mix – dry – with melted butter poured over the top'.)
The most distinctive cobbler I try comes from Meggett's book, Gullah Geechee Home Cooking, co-authored with Kayla Stewart and Trelani Michelle, on the Lowcountry cuisine of coastal South Carolina, and particularly her lifelong home, Edisto Island. Instead of a top crust, the dish is filled with a buttery sponge batter topped with peaches – it's light, fluffy and very quick to make, though, good as all the recipes are, I like the scone-like toppings in McDonald and the ATK recipes best; if I'm serving up something called a cobbler, I don't want it to feel like a pie or an upside-down cake, but something distinctively different, as well as emphatically American.
Both recipes use fluffy drop biscuits, rather than the flakier rolled kind – for a British audience, these are more like dumplings than rowies/butteries – which makes sense, because they're better suited to soaking up juice (and, in keeping with the spirit of the cobbler, much quicker and easier to make). The method is similar to scones, but uses a wetter dough, moistened with McDonald's tangy buttermilk, which my testers prefer to the more neutral but richer yoghurt in the ATK recipe. But we all agree some raising agent is required; an unleavened dough, though tasty, does have tendency to sit heavy as a stone upon the fruit. Adding it to a filling that's already hot helps it to cook through in time, and though the biscuit itself shouldn't be too sweet, in contrast to what lies beneath, a final topping of granulated sugar adds a delightful crunch.
Miss Lewis served her peach cobbler with 'an unusual' (but very tasty) nutmeg syrup, but more common pairings are vanilla ice-cream (McDonald and Randall), whipped cream (ATK) and even, non-canonically, creme fraiche or yoghurt. But ice-cream is, in my opinion, the American dream.
(Note that this is good served warm as well as well as hot, but not chilled, because that makes the topping turn a little doughy. You could marinate the peaches in advance, but don't make the biscuit dough until just before baking.)
Prep 10 min
Marinate 30 min+
Cook 45 min+ Rest 15 min
Serves 6
About 800g ripe but fairly firm peaches (about 4-5 medium-sized ones)2 tbsp soft light brown or demerara sugar, or white sugar if preferredA pinch of salt
15g butter, diced, plus extra for greasing1½ tsp cornflour
1 tbsp lemon juice
¼ tsp almond extract (optional)
½ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
Ice-cream, to serve
For the topping100g cold butter
175g plain flour
2 tbsp caster sugar
¼ tsp fine salt
1 tsp baking powder
150ml buttermilk, or 145ml milk mixed with 1 tsp lemon juice or vinegar1 tbsp demerara sugar
Cut the peaches into chunky wedges, scatter with the sugar and salt, then leave to sit at room temperature for at least 30 minutes.
Heat the oven to 220C (200C fan)/gas 7, and grease a baking dish just large enough to hold all the fruit in a single layer.
Grate or dice the 100g butter for the topping and put it in the freezer. Drain the juice from the steeped peaches and reserve.
Arrange the drained peaches in the base of the rimmed baking dish. Put the cornflour in a small bowl, stir in two tablespoons of the reserved peach juice, plus the lemon juice and almond extract, if using, until dissolved, then toss this mix and the nutmeg with the peaches. Top with the diced butter.
Put the peach dish on a rimmed baking tray, pop the lot in the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes, until the juices are bubbling.
Meanwhile, put the flour, caster sugar, salt and baking powder for the topping in a large bowl. Add the frozen grated butter, toss to coat, then rub in with your fingertips just until the mix resembles coarse crumbs with visible pieces of butter still in there – it shouldn't be fully rubbed in.
Once the peaches are bubbling, turn down the oven to 200 (180C fan)/gas 6 and stir the buttermilk into the flour to make a wet, shaggy dough.
Dollop this on top of the fruit, leaving spaces between the blobs for them to expand. Top with a sprinkling of demerara sugar and bake for another 30-35 minutes, until golden.
Remove, leave to cool for at least 15 minutes, then serve with ice-cream.
Proper southern peach cobbler? Go on, tell me how it's really done!