Andrea of
Nummy Kitchen chose this week's SMS recipe:
Bear's Peach Cobbler.
This would be my first time making a cobbler so I was pretty excited about it. I decided that I would use frozen peaches, since fresh peaches would probably not be sweet and juicy (yet). During my last stop of my Saturday grocery shopping routine, I remembered I needed to buy the frozen peaches. Well, guess what? They didn't have any. With no time to go to a different store, I decided I'm either going to skip this week or be creative and use something else. I already had strawberries. What else to add? Hmmmm... the rhubarb in my garden is ready for harvest and I love the strawberry/rhubarb combo. So I went for that.
I had to make a few changes to the recipe. Given the tartness of the rhubarb, I omitted the lemon juice in the filling and used orange juice instead. Same thing with the lemon zest (replaced it with orange zest). I actually used the orange zest in the topping as well as the filling.
All in all, the Strawberry/Rhubarb Cobbler turned out great, even though it became somewhat messy in the oven when the juices overflowed. I would definitely make it again, and maybe try peaches next time :o)
A special thanks to Andrea for choosing this recipe. It was a fun and easy recipe to make, and most importantly delicious. You can find the recipe for it
here. Don't forget to check out the other
SMS bakers and see what they thought of this recipe.
Final thoughts/tips:
- Hubby and I enjoyed this dessert a lot. When asked for a rating, hubby gave it a 9 out of 10. The aesthetics (as the cobbler was a bit over browned) is what kept this puppy from getting a perfect grade.
- I cut the recipe half and used 1.5 cups of strawberries and 1.5 cups of sliced rhubarb. Given the tartness of the rhubarb, I used 1/2 cup of sugar
- Instead of mixing the corn starch with the fruit, I followed a technique by Greg Patent where you add sugar to the fruit, let it sit while you make the dough, then drain it. Now add the citrus juice and corn starch to the liquid and bring it to a boil and cook for a minute. Add this thickend mixture to the fruit and divide the fruit filling into ramekins.
- I made the dough in the food processor (dry ingredients first, mix, add cold butter, mix, add cream, mix, done).
Rhubarb from garden + cinnamon sticks + whole cloves
The fruit is ready to jam
Jam on toast, yum!
Strawberry Rhubarb Turnovers
Strawberry Rhubarb Turnover sprinkled with powdered sugar
