Thursday, August 26, 2010

CEIMB: Individual Mixed Berry Cobblers


This week's Craving Ellie in My Belly recipe was a little something different for us. Typically this summer, the recipes we've been making for the group have been savory meals. We've had some truly fantastic dishes, as a result. But now it was time for a fantastic dessert!



This week it was Pamela of Cookies with Boys' turn to choose, and she decided to go for Mixed Berry Cobbler, from Ellie's So Easy book. Since I knew that the original recipe was going to make much more cobbler than we could handle, I decided it would be fun to use my adorable little ramekins again and make mini, individual mixed berry cobblers. Plus, I had just enough of an open, frozen bag of mixed berries hanging around to make two ramekins' worth. Score!




However, since I was cutting the recipe down to a third the amount, I had to do some fancy estimating to cut all the ingredients back. It was proving difficult, for example, to cut 1/4 cup flour down to a third of that amount. I tried my best to be accurate, but I had my doubts as to whether or not the biscuit topping would work out well.


I'll be curious to see how the other CEIMBers' biscuit topping looked, since mine appeared a bit too thin before I baked it. I was still worried while it was in the oven and I kept checking on it, assuming (correctly) that my little single servings would not take nearly as long to bake as Ellie's 8x8 baking dish would. I took them out after about 22 minutes, and they looked great! The fruit mixture was thick and bubbly, and the biscuit had browned very nicely and definitely had not melted or disintegrated into the fruit, as I had feared it would. In place of regular granulated sugar, I had sprinkled some turbinado sugar (sugar in the raw) on mine, and it gave the tops of the cobblers a nice, golden shimmer.




This cobbler was a dream to make, in terms of difficulty level. For a seemingly complex dessert, it took nearly no time at all to put together. The hardest part, for me, was just cutting everything down to one-third. If I'd made the 8x8 dish, this would have been even more painless!


Since the hubs loves desserts that include fruit, I had a feeling he'd love this, and he did. I'm much less of a fruit-in-my-dessert fan, but I'm super happy with the way these turned out. Ellie's done it again!




Thanks, Pamela! It was nice to make an after-dinner treat for a change. To see how the other members of the group fared, you can check out the blogroll, here. Ellie's Mixed Berry Cobbler can be found on Food Network's website, here.

8 comments:

  1. What a good idea to make individual servings. Super job and the cobblers look fantastic. Sometimes the batter or dough looks like it won't amount to much but truly surprises in the end.

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  2. I had the same concerns about the topping. Usually, my cobblers have blotches of the topping spaced over the filling but this time, it spread to cover most of the berries and peaches. If we are wrong, we are in good company. Yours looks just right.

    It was really nice, having dessert.

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  3. Good Job with you calculations! The mini cobblers look perfect and delicious!

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  4. Great idea to scale it down for individual servings, even if it made ingredient amounts a bit more difficult to sort out. Plus, they look tasty and cute!

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  5. My husband loved it too! I agree it was a nice treat!

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  6. Fantastic idea with the ramekins!! I had a similar idea of cutting the recipe down, but since I would have wanted really only 1 serving for myself I decided that would be too much work - all that math and those fractions are not my strongest point :) I'm definitely going to mark this as one to try later though because it looks delicious.

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  7. It did seem awfully easy to be so awfully good. My topping was too thin also. Wish I had spread it out more. I always like to make more topping even when making 1/2 or so of a dessert. Can always use it later.

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  8. I know, I'm a little late getting around this week...trying to make the most of summer before it disappears! Your cobbler looks wonderful and I am going to try the little dish size next time as I think it would be fun to have one all to myself!! Great idea for company as well. Looks great!

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