With all of the hot humid summer days we had in July, we knew it was a perfect time to pick some fruit from this little gem in the capital area NY, Bohman’s Orchard. We were brought down by trolley from raspberries to blueberries to peaches. It really is a treat to go pick your own produce right off of the plant. You never have a big enough container for all that you see and want to eat. Licking the juice off of your fingers, crawling under branches and bushes and reaching up for that one on the tree just out of reach are things you will never do in a typical grocery store.
How do you share a bag of peaches among friends evenly before they rot? Make a peach cobbler! We found a recipe online and decided to give it a try.
We didn’t exactly follow ALL of the directions to a T. We lowered the sugar down by half. Come on, butter cookies take less sugar than that and peaches have natural sugar to them too! Why so much? The recipe we found called for two whole cups of sugar!!! I know for baking you need to follow the directions almost to a T, but I couldn’t quite abide by this. Peaches have a lot of sugar in them anyways.
We piled up a cup of chopped peaches and folded in some blueberries. While we let the peaches and sugar stew in a pot (the recipe called for the peaches to be softened by boiling them – I added some extra water to help it along) we made the batter. This was very similar to your standard cake batter. This is kind of where we noticed something seemed off. Normally a cobbler doesn’t come out with THAT MUCH to it. While it tasted good (I mean come on, you put in that much sugar, and it will taste good a-priori) there just seemed to be tooooo much for that teeny tiny amount of fruit that they called for.
You need some serious grease on these pans to keep things from sticking around here! I have messed this up several times (and almost ruined a few breakfasts at that). The key is to make sure you grease the pan, no skimping here. We added the stewed peaches and the blueberries and poured the batter on top. Then it was plopped into an oven preheated to 375 degrees Fahrenheit for roughly 40 minutes.
Our batter came out pretty nicely if I do say so myself for a first time. I felt like a little southern belle putting in my 2 cents here and there helping him spread and pour from flour to 2% milk. I noticed as it was cooking that the batter seemed to seep underneath and immerse the fruit while baking. It seemed to come out very cake like, and not so much like a cobbler… Next time, I think we cut down the batter or use a different recipe altogether. But I suppose that is how we learn, eh?
To be honest, we’ve never even had a taste of peach cobbler before, so we need some talk about how to improve the recipe. Doesn’t he look handsome over a hot pot of stewing peaches?
I love you too, darling!