Got Blackberries? Make Cobbler!

This time of year in the Seattle area there is an abundance of blackberries that are free for the picking! Blackberry bushes grow wild in this area and most of the time are considered a nuisance, except of course when you get your bowl (or box!) full of free berries in the fall!

This year I was bound and determined to get as many berries as I could store from local parks, side streets and even my back yard! I wanted to make jam with some and freeze the rest so that I could have berries all year without having paid a dime. Well, Naomi and I set out last week to make that happen and I quickly realized on my first bush that my fear of large spiders GREATLY outweighs this desire to obtain free produce! I only got about 3 cups of blackberries before I gave up fighting with webs and very very large, hairy spiders!

We had company over for dinner that night so I figured I would make dessert with what I got, but I didn't even have enough to make a cobbler! I had to improvise and use some of the very ripe peaches I had in my fridge with the blackberries. Much to my surprise, this cobbler was one of the best I have ever tasted and was a HUGE hit at dinner that night!

I found THIS recipe and improvised using 1/2 blackberries, 1/2 ripe, peeled peaches. I used about 2 1/2 cups of berries & almost 2 cups of cubed peaches.

Dissolve 2 tbsp corn starch with 1/4 cup cold water in a pot and mix in 1 cup of sugar, 1 tbsp lemon juice & your fruits. Bring the mixture to a boil stirring often.

In the meantime, mix 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt in a large bowl. Cut in 6 tbsp of butter into the dry mix until it looks like crumbs. Slowly mix in 1/4 cup of boiling water until the mixture is evenly moist.

Transfer your fruit mixture into a baking dish (recipe calls for cast iron skillet but I didn't have one and my casserole dish worked great). Drop your dough into the dish by the spoonful covering the fruit as much as you can.

Bake at 400 degrees F for 25 minutes until the dough is golden brown. I highly recommend you cover a cookie sheet with foil and place it on the rack directly below the dish as the fruit mix did spill over quite a bit during baking.

Serve warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream (or Cool Whip since we all got a bunch for free last week, right?!) and ENJOY!