Tag Archives: baking

Sweet and Sour Cherry Scones

In the wide world of baked goods, maybe one sweet treat in every twenty is worth baking (or eating!) again. Oftentimes, we bakers cover our “sins” in sugar, which easily becomes the dominant flavor in whatever we bake. These sweet and sour cherry scones are anything but basic sugary fluff. Fortified with oats and moistened with buttermilk, these barely-sweet scones offer tart cherries where others might offer chocolate chips. This is not your average baked good, people. This scone is the stuff of legends, and makes for a breakfast of similarly epic proportions. There’s really no word for them better than “hearty;” so if that’s not your bag (and I get it, it’s not everyone’s bag) then you may want to check out this recipe for decadent chocolate cake instead!

sweet and sour cherry scone recipe ingredients
soak your cherries ! 🙂

I find I have best results when I soak my cherries in water before baking. That’s them relaxing in a jar full of water in the upper right corner.

Why Soak the Fruit?

Those who fail to soak may end up with a drier overall baked good, as the cherry will draw moisture from the dough during the baking process. If you want your sweet and sour cherry scones around for more than one day, moisture becomes even more precious–not to mention the cherries have a much more enjoyable texture when still plump and juicy after baking. So, soak your cherries anywhere from 30 minutes to overnight.

Are These Sweet and Sour Cherry Scones Good For Me? If So, Are They Boring?

The short answer to the first part is, all things considered, for a sweet treat yes, they are relatively healthy. There’s no shortage of butter, but hey, these scones have lasting power that may save you some calories down the road. Plus they’ve got fiber from the oats and vitamins C, A, and K, antioxidants, and several minerals from cherries to boot. It’s not as good for you as taking a supplement, but is, perhaps, tastier, and, perhaps, more comforting.

This brings us to the “are they healthy and therefore uninteresting” part of the posited question. If you like textural juxtaposition in your mouthfeel experience when eating, feeling nourished and also like you’re getting away with something at the same time, and eating cherries in any capacity, then chances are these scones probably won’t bore you. I have probably made these scones dozens of times and still reliably crave them. But if, being a reasonable and sophisticated adult, you already think healthy and delicious don’t have to be mortal enemies, then you probably won’t take much convincing about these scones…fiber content aside.

scone dough, scone dough recipe, cut butter, oats
use a pastry cutter or your fingers to incorporate butter <3

If you have a pastry cutter at home, now is its moment! But if you are one of those who takes pleasure in the tactile, you may enjoy incorporating the cold butter into the dry ingredients with your fingers. Somewhere, I have a pastry cutter that is feeling neglected…

dough disk, cherry scone dough, oats, flour, butter, sugar, soaked dried cherries
dough disc

Flatten your dough into a disc about an inch and a half thick, slice into eight relatively uniform triangles, and bake until golden brown. Something to consider: the more you incorporate your ingredients, the tougher your scones will be. Every time you push and pull on your dough, you are participating in forming a gluten network. While this is great for breads, most folks tend to prefer a tender scone. Mix with your hands or a wooden spoon until everything just comes together.

sweet and sour cherry scones recipe

Best when shared (but you already knew that)! These scones last, at best, for two full days but really are best when eaten the day you decide to bake them. You can always freeze them in a freezer-safe bag if you think eight scones is too much to enjoy or distribute.

hearty buttermilk scones, sweet and sour cherry scones, oat scones, buttermilk scones, hearty oat scones

Hearty McQueen Scones

Soaked tart cherries and wholesome oats mean this buttermilk-moistened scone has some serious lasting power! Makes a great breakfast.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 30 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Course Breakfast, Dessert, Snack
Cuisine baking, Healthy, traditional
Servings 8 scones

Ingredients
  

  • 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 8 Tbs butter, (salted is fine)
  • 1 cup whole oats
  • 1/3 cup dried cherries, soaked in water at least 30 minutes to overnight
  • 1/3 cup buttermilk

Instructions
 

  • Preheat oven to 375°F.
  • Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar together. Add butter in small cubes, and combine using a pastry cutter or fork.
  • Add oats, cherries, and buttermilk, mixing after each individual addition. After adding the buttermilk, mix until just combined.
  • Shape dough into a disc about an inch and a half thick, using a floured surface and your hands.
  • Use a sharp, serrated knife to cut the dough into eight triangular pieces. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake 15-20 minutes, or until lightly golden brown. Keep in an airtight container up to two days.
Keyword cherries, cherry scones, oat scones, scones, sour cherries, tart cherries

 

 

No-Fuss Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls

Let’s face it–some sourdough recipes are anything but no-fuss. This recipe for sourdough cinnamon rolls will restore your confidence in getting results out of your culture and yield tasty, gooey results.

On the coattails of sourdough’s great, quarantine-inspired resurgence, many bread lovers with lofty aspirations of achieving the perfect loaf have come to the same conclusion: working with sourdough can be kind of hard. It’s not that caring for a starter poses an insurmountable challenge. If anything, neglecting–or simply forgetting–about your starter in the fridge can be the biggest hurdle, if you don’t bake every day, or even every week.

What Does It Mean To Care For Sourdough Starter

The fact is, sourdough is alive with wild yeasts and lactobacilli, an umbrella term for bacteria strains typically found in yogurt and dairy products. These strains of bacteria excel at converting sugar into lactic and acetic acid, which translates, happily for us, into flavor. (This is why we love our artisan bakers for intimately caring for their cultured loaves, from the beginning stages of liquid starter to a gorgeously shaped levain.)

Dreamy as the sourdough life may seem, not all of us can shape our lives around a schedule dictated by bacteria, temperature, and flour. The good news is, there are many uses for sourdough starter other than making bread, many of which take much less time to master.

Ways to De-Mystify Your Starter

If pulling out the scale once a week becomes a pain point in the process of caring for your starter, ditch it.

The deeper one digs into the realm of sourdough culture (pun intended) the more involved (and superstitious) recipes for sourdough become. A baker may weigh every ounce to the proper decimal, consider every variable impacting culture activity, and plan their life around their starter–and still bake a crummy loaf.

Don’t view your starter as a complex adversary–it is a new friend you are getting to know.

Feed your sourdough culture 1 cup of water and 1 cup of flour when you pull it from the fridge. Clean the container, pour the fed starter back into its vessel, and use what doesn’t fit in a recipe like No-Fuss Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls. (This is called sourdough discard.)

If you are unsure of how to use your sourdough discard, consider these ideas:

A simple rule of thumb for understanding sourdough starter behavior is, the warmer the environment, the more active the starter. This is why if you keep sourdough starter on your fridge, it requires daily feedings–versus the weekly feedings required when kept in the fridge.

Resources For Further Sourdough Recipes and Research

  • The New York Times produced a deep dive into making a sourdough loaf, with illustrative pictures and step-by-step instructions.
  • Breadtopia hosts a wealth of information about different kinds of flours, sourdough care, loaf-shaping methods, and also boasts a large collection of recipes.
  • King Arthur Flour is a trusted source for recipes with predictable levels of success for bakers of all experience levels.
  • Cultures For Health is an excellent resource for many “alive” products, including milk and water kefirs, sourdough, kombucha, and more.

But enough about starter care: let’s get to the good stuff.

https://videopress.com/v/DqlkWU6p?preloadContent=metadata

hear that? that’s the sound of success. and also, my neighbors’ construction project 🙂

This recipe is for the casual sourdough fan,

who may have acquired a starter during quarantine but still would unabashedly consider themselves in the “training wheels” phase of Sourdough Understanding. Personally, I’ve had my starter for years, and I’m still getting to know it–I am still baking loaves that cause me frustration, and, occasionally, I bake beautiful ones.

These cinnamon rolls, however, have yet to disappoint. This was one of the first recipes I ever followed which yielded successful results from a starter and made me believe that maybe I was, in fact, developing the accompanying intuition for translating my starter’s behavior into an end result I wanted to eat.

sourdough cinnamon rolls, real cream cheese frosting, vanilla bean cream cheese cinnamon buns, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
vanilla cream cheese frosting makes everything better…and a flaky bun makes for a great bite

Assemble the ingredients for the dough and mix.

sourdough cinnamon rolls, sourdough cinnamon buns, cinnamon buns recipe, sourdough discard recipes, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
there’s our friend the sourdough starter, in the top left corner
sourdough cinnamon rolls, shaggy dough, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
she may look a little shaggy, but she cleans up real neat

It is very important not to overmix the dough at any point in this recipe!

When you first begin mixing the ingredients together, feel free to use your hands so you can experience the textural change the ingredients undergo as they combine. The dough should barely come together, feel shaggy, and also very tender. The more you “knead” the dough and mix it together, the tougher it gets (and nobody wants a tough bun!) due to gluten networks forming. Treat this dough as gently as possible and you will be rewarded with airy, delicious buns.

On paper, this shaggy mixture should hang out at room temperature overnight–but since it’s been a little colder at my place in these winter months, I let it sit on the counter, covered, for about 18 hours. Again, don’t go overboard adhering to a strict schedule on this one. I’ve made these before letting the dough rest about 10 hours with great success. This is not a recipe to stress about…promise.

Here’s what the dough looked like after resting for a glorious 18 hours:

shaggy sourdough dough mass, cinnamon rolls, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
the dough should be significantly more relaxed in the bottom of the bowl
butter, sugar, salt, cinnamon rolls, sourdough discard recipe, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
l: filling ingredients; r: rising agents and salt for dough

Sprinkle baking soda, baking powder, and salt over the dough and mix gently until incorporated. Dough should be incredibly soft, tender, and supple at this point and will literally feel like (and resemble) a dimpled baby’s bottom. Roll dough out over a floured surface into a vaguely rectangular shape.

Filling ingredients are mashed together with a fork until a paste forms. Spread over the dough, roll into a log, and cut.

cinnamon, sugar, butter, dough, cinnamon buns, sourdough cinnamon rolls recipe, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
i am of the school of thought that more filling is better…
unbaked cinnamon rolls, sourdough cinnamon rolls, sourdough cinnamon buns, gooey cinnamon buns recipe, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
leave some space in your pan to account for growth
cream cheese frosting with real vanilla bean, cinnamon rolls, frosted cinnamon rolls recipe, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
whipped up some vanilla cream cheese frosting, because that’s my business
gorgeous cinnamon rolls, sourdough discard recipes, sourdough starter, sourdough cinnamon buns, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
good morning to me
gooey cinnamon rolls, gooey sourdough cinnamon buns, sourdough starter, cream cheese frosting, vanilla bean, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
if you like a bun with a little structural integrity, this is the recipe for you

No-Fuss Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls

This simple dough relaxes at room temperature overnight before being rolled out, rolled up, and baked into sweety cinnamon-y goodness.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 45 minutes
Resting Time 12 hours
Total Time 13 hours 10 minutes
Course Breakfast, Dessert
Cuisine American, festive, holiday, Intuitive, sourdough, traditional

Ingredients
  

Dough

  • 1/2 cup cold butter, salted
  • 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup active sourdough starter, or sourdough discard
  • 1 Tbs white sugar
  • 1 cup whole milk
  • 1 tsp fine salt
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda

Filling

  • 2 sticks salted butter, at room temperature
  • 1 Tbs ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp ground ginger
  • 1 cup dark brown sugar

Icing

  • 4 oz full fat cream cheese, room temperature
  • 1/4 cup whole milk
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla or vanilla bean paste
  • 3/4 cup powdered sugar
  • 1 pinch of salt

Instructions
 

  • 12 hours or so before you wish to bake, prepare the dough.
  • Using a food processor or a pastry cutter, combine butter and flour until the mixture looks sandy and uniform. If using a food processor, empty contents into a large bowl. Add starter, sugar, and milk and very gently mix until dough only just comes together. It is important not to overmix at this stage. Cover the dough with plastic wrap or a clean, damp towel and let rest at room temperature 12-18 hours.
  • In a small bowl, mix salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Sprinkle over the rested dough and mix with your hands until the ingredients are incorporated. Dough should slacken considerably and feel very tender and light. Again, be careful not to overmix.
  • Preheat oven to 400°F.
  • Lightly flour a clean level surface and roll out the dough until it is roughly 1/4" thick, and in a rectangular shape.
  • In a medium bowl, mash warm butter, sugar, cinnamon, and ginger with a fork until a paste forms. Spread the paste evenly over the dough using the back of a spoon or a spatula.
  • Roll the dough up lengthwise as tightly as possible. Cut the ends off of the log, then cut the remaining dough into roughly 1" thick rounds.
  • Place buns in a buttered cast iron skillet, cookie sheet, or muffin tin and bake 20-25 minutes, or until buns are golden brown at the edges.
  • Meanwhile, prepare the icing in a medium bowl. Combine room temperature cream cheese, vanilla, salt, and milk with a whisk or spatula. Gradually add powdered sugar until incorporated, adding more sugar as desired.
  • Drizzle buns with icing and serve immediately. Keeps in the fridge up to 3 days. Reheat in small bursts in the microwave for delicious leftovers.
Keyword are cinnamon rolls breakfast, are cinnamon rolls breakfast or dessert, are cinnamon rolls healthy, autumn baking, autumn eats, autumn feel good, baking, cinnamon buns, cinnamon rolls, crumbs, crumbs on crumbs, crumbsoncrumbs, culture, discard recipes, diy cinnamon rolls, fall baking, fall eats, fall feel good, feel good food plan, how cinnamon rolls are made, how to make cinnamon rolls, intuitive chef, intuitive cooking, intuitive cuisine, intuitive eats, intuitive food plan, intuitive recipe, sourdough, sourdough baking, sourdough cinnamon rolls, sourdough culture, sourdough recipes, sourdough starter, what is cinnamon roll dough, what is cinnamon roll icing, will cinnamon rolls rise in the oven

Triple Decker Chocolate Cake

…seems simple enough, right? Well, with the help of Samin Nosrat, I’m getting a little more curious about the science behind what makes delicious cake just that. What better way to practice our cake-perfecting game than this recipe for triple decker chocolate cake?

Whether from a box or from scratch, it’s safe to say most households have made a chocolate cake at least once. Nosrat points out in “Salt Fat Acid Heat” that even boxed cake mixes call for some kind of oil rather than butter. Why might this be, you ask?

According to Nosrat, oil more evenly coats flour particles in comparison to butter. This inhibits gluten development which encourages a more tender, moist crumb. This does, in turn, create a cake that is a little denser when compared to butter’s capacity for aeration.

For a classic chocolate cake, I’ll happily take a dense, moist crumb and save the fluffy stuff for another time. And when I found this recipe for a three-layer chocolate cake made with oil, I knew I was in for a decadent treat.

Triple Decker Chocolate Cake Recipe

how to make the perfect chocolate cake, perfect three layer chocolate cake recipe, chocolate cake from scratch, best chocolate cake recipe, chocolate cake ingredients, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
i chose to use canola oil for this cake, but vegetable oil or some other neutral oil would work well too

This cake baking endeavor posed an excellent opportunity to test out my new cake strips, which you can see pictured above as the thick, purple strips of fabric.

If you don’t know what cake strips are, you aren’t alone! I only learned of them recently. The idea is simple: buffer the heat between the temperature of the oven and the outermost ring of cake batter in order to more evenly heat the cake as it bakes. This makes for a more homogenous rise across the surface of the cake, which prevents doming.

To test this, I used two cake strips on two cake pans, and baked the third without.

chocolate cake batter, triple decker chocolate cake, three layer chocolate cake, homemade chocolate cake with three layers, are cake strips worth it, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
about 3 cups of batter went into each cake pan

Are Cake Strips Worth It?

Here’s an aerial shot of both the independent variable (no cake strips) and dependent variable (with cake strips).

chocolate cake layer experiment, cake strips, prevent cake layer from doming, how to get an even layer of cake, how to bake the perfect cake, triple decker chocolate cake with homemade chocolate buttercream, chocolate buttercream frosting, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
can you tell the difference? (l: no cake strips; r: cake strips)

Here you can see the dome from the layer baked without strips:

baked chocolate cake layer without cake strips, how to prevent your cake layers from doming, layered chocolate cake, how to improve your cake game, how to bake the perfect cake, fluffy crumb chocolate cake, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
dennnng, check out that dome

Versus a close up of a layer baked with the strips:

baked chocolate cake layer with cake strips, how to improve your cake game, how to bake the perfect cake, fluffy crumb chocolate cake, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
in the background is the hump of the layer baked w/o strips–but you can see the outer rim of the cake pan, unique to those layers baked with the strips

The overall height of the layers of cake strips versus no cake strips was different as well, even though each layer roughly had three cups of batter prior to baking.

baked chocolate cake layer without cake strips, how to improve your cake game, how to bake the perfect cake, fluffy crumb chocolate cake, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
no cake strips–dense, tight crumb at the edges
baked chocolate cake layer with cake strips, how to improve your cake game, how to bake the perfect cake, fluffy crumb chocolate cake, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
with cake strips–fluffier crumb throughout

What do you think?

I have to admit, I am a new cake strips convert. You can purchase them here, if you are moved by this testimony. (And no, they are not paying me to say this! 🙂

After the exciting reveal of the cake strip experiment, I whipped up some buttercream frosting and layered my cake.

triple decker chocolate cake, chocolate cake from scratch, homemade chocolate cake recipe, homemade chocolate buttercream, chocolate buttercream recipe, chocolate frosting recipe from scratch, three layer chocolate cake, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
dark chocolate shavings make everything better

I was good and waited until after dinner to dig into this cake…we’ll see if I can follow suit tomorrow!

triple decker chocolate cake, chocolate cake from scratch, homemade chocolate cake recipe, homemade chocolate buttercream, chocolate buttercream recipe, chocolate frosting recipe from scratch, three layer chocolate cake, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
a thin layer of frosting on the bottommost layer prevents the cake from sliding away from center on the cake plate, which is helpful if your cake is destined to travel places

Yum!

Triple Decker Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Generously serves 12

Cake

  • Butter and all-purpose flour for coating the cake pans
  • 3 c all-purpose flour
  • 3 c sugar
  • 1 ¾ c unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 1 Tbs baking soda
  • 1 ½ tsp baking powder
  • 1 ½ tsp salt
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 ½ c buttermilk
  • 1 ½ c near-boiling water
  • ½ c canola oil
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter three nine-inch cake rounds and dust with flour, tapping out the excess. If using, soak cake strips for 5 minutes and apply to the exterior of the cake pans without ringing out the water. 

Slowly mix dry ingredients in a stand mixer until combined.

Add wet ingredients and beat for two minutes on medium speed, until everything is thoroughly incorporated.

Divide the batter evenly into the three cake pans, just over three cups worth.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.

Cool for 20 minutes before running a knife around the outer edge of the cake and inverting each layer onto a wire cooling rack. Allow cake to cool completely before frosting.

Frosting

  • 1 ½ c butter (3 sticks), room temperature
  • 3.5-4.5 c powdered sugar (taste as you go and make it as sweet as you like!)
  • ¾ c unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 3 Tbs heavy cream or whole milk
  • Dark chocolate bar for shaving on top

Beat softened butter with an electric mixer until soft and fluffy. 

Add vanilla, cream, and cocoa powder and mix until incorporated. Add powdered sugar in increments, tasting as you go, until frosting is of desired sweetness. Frost in between each layer, the top of the cake, and the sides. 

Shave dark chocolate using a vegetable peeler on top of the freshly-frosted cake. Keeps well plastic wrapped at room temperature or tightly sealed in the fridge. Serve with a glass of your milk of choice.

Peach-Blueberry Cobbler with Cornmeal Biscuits

It was a busy week at the bakery. Not too busy, however, to make time for this peach-blueberry cobbler with cornmeal biscuits!

By the time I made it to the end of my work week, I was exhausted…but still made time to make concord-orange zest jam with the grapes I harvested with my dearest, oldest friend over the course of the week. At her recommendation, I followed Rachel Saunders’ recipe from her book dedicated to preserves, titled “Blue Chair.” It’s quickly risen to the top of my wishlist of cookbooks to own someday.

Since I am newly obsessed with serrano peppers thanks to this phenomenal recipe, I partitioned off a smaller pot to experiment with, and added a few thin slices of the green pepper, and its seeds. The results were pretty amazing: sweet, complex jam, with a hint of peppery spice right at the finish. Worth going back for more grapes, and going through the painstaking labor of stemming 4 lbs and squeezing each grape from its skin.

But by the time Sunday rolled around, I was ready to cook some more…one day of rest after a week of 10+ hour workdays is enough right? (Right??) I rose from bed, donned my enormous sweater, cute pants, and shoes NOT caked in flour and syrup, and went to the farmer’s market.

For around $30, I got a large bag full of Italian Empress plums, six relatively local peaches, and a whole chicken from this awesome farm. Plum preserves are next on the list, followed by Alison Roman’s chicken and dumplings.

But these peaches! Lord! Is there anything like that scent? A scent that screams to be paired with vanilla, almond, whiskey, cream…and berries! (Wild blackberries are my favorite pairing with peach, but they’re few and far between this late in the season–they’ve had an odd year.)

I got into the kitchen and started scheming. I’ve already made a peach cake this year using peach puree in the batter (with blackberry quick jam in between layers with marscapone buttercream frosting), and several peach galettes. But y’know what I haven’t had in a millennia? A good, old-fashioned cobbler.

Peach-Blueberry Cobbler with Cornmeal Biscuits

Of course, I had to go to Smitten Kitchen for this one when I saw the cornmeal biscuits on top. I followed her simple recipe almost exactly, only added a little less brown sugar than hers, and my cobbler was mostly peaches with just a HINT of blueberries. And dang, was I pleased with the results.

peach-blueberry cobbler with cornmeal biscuits, mixed fruit cobbler, low-sugar fruit cobbler, low-sugar dessert ideas, summer fruit desserts, ways to use up peaches, peach cobbler recipe, textured cornmeal biscuits on fruit cobbler, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
perfectly ripe fruit is such a turn on, no?

Aside from being utterly delicious, this recipe is dead simple, and there’s a wonderful interplay of textures between the cooked fruit and biscuits. I made my biscuits with a coarser grind of cornmeal for added texture. At first I thought, “Oh boy, I’ve gone too far with this one!” because my biscuits came out of the oven damned GRITTY. But as the cobbler sat in my fridge over the next 8 hours (yes, I had cobbler for lunch–don’t judge me!) the cornmeal did what cornmeal does best–absorbed that beautiful, beautiful liquid.

how to make a cornmeal biscuit, Peach-blueberry cobbler with cornmeal biscuits, fruit cobbler recipe, summer peach cobbler, mixed fruit cobbler recipe, fruit cobbler with textured cornmeal biscuits, cornmeal biscuit fruit cobbler, Smitten Kitchen, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
I used Bob’s Red Mill polenta, but finer cornmeal would work beautifully here too, especially if you want your cobbler, like, yesterday.

Now I’m from the rain and never ate a single biscuit, to my knowledge, before the age of 25 when I started working as a barista for a roaster in Portland and was around morning pastries every day (I’m looking at you, bacon cheddar biscuit). So to say these fluffy creations aren’t exactly in my intuition base would be an understatement. They seem deceptively simple, but if you’ve ever had a lifeless, or tacky, or painfully chewy biscuit, you begin to understand there is more than meets the eye, here. Cornmeal seems an unlikely addition at first, but the two have a relationship I’m eager to continue to explore.

Peach-blueberry cobbler with cornmeal biscuits, fruit cobbler recipe, summer peach cobbler, mixed fruit cobbler recipe, fruit cobbler with textured cornmeal biscuits, cornmeal biscuit fruit cobbler, Smitten Kitchen, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
fruit dotted with cornmeal dough

I didn’t have regular milk for the buttermilk so I used almond, but the acid from the lemon I used to make it did what acid does with baking powder: caused floof to happen. (Yay, floof!) I spooned these pillowy-yet-hearty beauties over my fruit with mounting anticipation. Thank goodness this whole thing only takes about 30 minutes to make.

Peach-blueberry cobbler with cornmeal biscuits, fruit cobbler recipe, summer peach cobbler, mixed fruit cobbler recipe, fruit cobbler with textured cornmeal biscuits, cornmeal biscuit fruit cobbler, Smitten Kitchen, Crumbs on Crumbs, Marion Bright
thar she blows!

Because I’m freaky like that, I brushed the exposed fruit with warm salted honey/apricot jam glaze, just for a little extra zhush. I’m telling you, I could not stop eating this cobbler.

Go get you some peaches (if you haven’t already!) and make yourself dessert. Don’t neglect the cornmeal! Take pride in your gritty biscuit!! It’s a welcome counterpart to cooked peach, believe me.

Peach-Blueberry Cobbler with Cornmeal Biscuit Topping
Adapted from smittenkitchen.com

Fruit
1 ½ lbs (about 4 cups) pounds peaches, pitted and cut into chunks of various sizes
1 pint (about 2 cups) blueberries, rinsed and dried
1/3 cup-2/3 cup packed dark-brown sugar (to taste)
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt

Biscuit
3/4 cup (3 1/4 ounces) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cornmeal (choose your own adventure with grit! 😉
3 tablespoons dark brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1/2 cup buttermilk, or about 2 tsp lemon juice or vinegar in any kind of milk, adding up to ½ cup

Preheat oven to 425°F. Toss peaches and blueberries in sugar, flour, lemon juice, cinnamon and salt in a 2-quart casserole dish.

Mix together the flour, cornmeal, brown sugar, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. Cut the butter into the dry mixture with a pastry blender or your fingers, then incorporate buttermilk with a rubber spatula until a wet, tacky dough forms.

Dollop heaping spoonfuls of the biscuit dough over the coated fruit, leaving gaps in between spoonfuls. Bake until the fruit is tender and the biscuit tops are browned, about 20 to 25 minutes. If you are so inclined, heat up 2 Tbs of honey or light-colored jam with a pinch of salt and brush the tops of the exposed fruit. Enjoy with your favorite creamy sidekick (ice cream, yogurt, crème fraiche, honeyed whipped cream…etc)!