Peach cobbler
A cobbler topping is somewhere between a crumble, scone and dumpling. Cook in a wide, shallow baking dish rather than something narrow and deep to make sure your ‘cobbles’ cook through but stay light and fluffy.
Ingredients
For the filling
- 8 peaches, stones removed and thickly sliced or diced into large pieces
- 1 tbsp cornflour
- 3 tbsp soft light brown or light muscovado sugar
- 1 lemon, zest and juice
- icing sugar, for dusting
- vanilla ice cream or cream, to serve
For the topping
- 225g/8oz plain flour
- 100²µ/3½´Ç³ú caster sugar
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp ground cinnamon
- pinch salt
- 85g/3oz cold butter, diced, plus extra for greasing
- 150ml/5fl oz full-fat milk
- 1½ tsp vanilla bean paste (or vanilla extract)
Method
Preheat the oven to 200C/180C Fan/Gas 6.
Grease a 30x21cm/12x8in baking dish and add the peaches. Mix the cornflour, brown sugar and lemon zest in a small bowl. Sprinkle over the peaches and use your hands to toss together. Drizzle over the lemon juice.
To make the topping, place the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and salt in a large bowl and stir together. Add the butter and rub in with your fingertips until no big lumps remain (or mix together in a food processor). Reserve a tablespoon of the milk then mix the rest with the vanilla paste.
Drizzle over the flour mixture and briefly mix together with a cutlery or palette knife until the dry ingredients are all damp and resemble a soft, scone-like dough. Scoop 8 heaped spoonfuls on top of the fruit in the baking dish and roughly brush with the reserved milk.
Bake for 30–35 minutes until the peaches are bubbling and the cobbler topping has slumped and is crisp, golden on top and baked through.
Dust with the icing sugar and serve the cobbler straight from the oven with ice cream or cream.
Recipe Tips
Swapping a third of the plain flour with spelt flour creates a lovely, nutty cobbler topping which is perfect for topping with flaked almonds before baking.
When peaches are out of season, use tinned peaches in juice instead of fresh ones. Drain 3 x 400g tins of all but 4 tablespoons of their juice and use this in place of the lemon juice.