The River Cottage Year Blackberry, Apple and Almond Cobbler
Recipe Sourced from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall – The River Cottage Year
"The cobbler is a classic English pudding – a close cousin of the crumble, yet for some inexplicable reason not as well known. It's hardly any more time-consuming to make, and the crusty, scone-like topping is quite wonderful.
Blackberry and apple is a traditional late-summer filling as the last of the blackberries overlap with the first of the cooking applies, such as Grenadier. It's worth freezing plenty of blackberries to use when the Bramleys are at their best.
This cobbler can easily be adapted for all kinds of fruit – plums and damsons, rhubarb and gooseberries. Just slightly sweeten the fruit and cook to a juicy compote, then pile the cobblers on top and bake." Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Ingredients
1 kilo of Bramleys or other dissolving cooking apples
100 g sugar
knob of Butter
Couple of tablespoons water
500 g blackberries
100ml whole milk
1 teaspoon lemon juice
100 g plain flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
75 g butter (extra)
100 g ground almonds (almond meal)
50 g caster sugar
1 tablespoon flaked almonds
Method
Peel, core and slice about 1 kilo of apples. Put into a saucepan with sugar, a small knob of butter and a couple of tablespoons water. Heat very gently until the juices begin to run. Cook the apples at a very gentle simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until you have a smooth compote. Taste for sweetness and add more sugar if you like, but keep it on the tart side. Then stir in about 500g blackberries and pile the mixture into a pie dish or other ovenproof dish, leaving a good couple of centimetres spare at the top.
Now make the cobbler topping. Mix milk, slightly warmed with 1 teaspoon lemon juice and set aside. Sift plain flour and baking powder into a bowl and rub in 75 g butter until you have fine crumbs. Stor in ground almonds and caster sugar, then mix in the milk to give a soft dough. You can do all this in a food processor, pulsing first the flour, baking powder and butter, then the almonds and sugar, then the milk.
Pile generous dessertspoons of the mixture (each one a "cobbler" not quite touching its neighbour) over the surface of the fruit of the dish. Aim for 6 – 8 cobblers in all. Scatter over 1 tablespoon flaked almonds, if you like. Place the dish in the centre of a moderate oven (180˚C) and bake for about 30 minutes, until the obblers are puffed and golden, like crusty scones. Leave to cook for 15 minutes or so (otherwise it will be scalding hot when you serve it). Serve plain, or with cream custard or ice-cream and a glass of Pfeiffer Late Harvest Muscadelle.
Note
If you want ot part-make the pudding a few hours in advance, prepare the fruit compote and mix the cobbler ingredients up to the point where you add the milk. Then about 45 minutes before you want to eat it (just before you sit down to lunch or dinner) whisk in the warm milk, make the cobblers and put in the oven.
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