Fruit Cobbler With Any Fruit

Buttermilk freezes well. I always buy it by the quart, then freeze what remains in one-cup amounts. It does separate a bit upon thawing; just whisk before adding to a recipe.

Where I live (Ireland) as in most of Europe we weigh everything so I am grateful when the NYT supplies weights. I am often mystified (and a little frustrated!) however when one ingredient is suddenly given in cups-here it's the quantity of fruit, given as 10 cups. Why the inconsistency? Ironically this is the one item it would be sensible to supply the weight for so that one doesn't have to laboriously potion out 10 cups of fruit.

I did not have buttermilk so I substituted cream for the buttermilk, and then I eliminated the baking soda to account for the change in acidity (something I learned from making biscuit dough). It was wonderful.

I just made peach cobbler with frozen organic Costco peaches. Tasted just like fresh!

I mostly use frozen fruit in cobblers because I tend to make cobblers more in the fall and winter when fresh fruits are a bit limited (except for pears and apples). I've used frozen peaches, frozen cherries, and frozen mixed berries in cobblers. No need to defrost, just dump the bag of fruit in at the point you're mixing the fruit, thickener, and sweetener.

To answer Heather: different fruits have different densities. A given weight in blueberries, say, would be a very different volume from the same weight of diced peaches. Since the amount of fruit in a cobbler must fill a given volume, it is more practical to measure in cups. If you make a lot of cobblers, you could always measure each time you use a different fruit, at the same time weighing and recoding the weight. Then, in the future, when you use that fruit, you could weigh it.

Just clabber some milk whenever you need buttermilk. I think it's one tablespoon of vinegar to one cup of milk. Let rest ten minutes. Or buy a can of the powdered stuff. It tastes good and lasts forever in the fridge.

Some of you may say "ick", but, for baking purposes, I find buttermilk to be just as good up to one month past the stated expiration date. Give it a shake before you pour and measure.

Buttermilk is available dry in envelopes, box of 4. Keep on shelf so always ready for biscuits, pancakes, waffles. Makes baked goods tender.

My mom used to make buttermilk with regular milk and lemon juice. This recipe looks like the cobbler she would make. Lovely!

I made this recipe with fresh peaches from a local orchard, and while it is good, I found the biscuits a bit dense. I believe more liquid is required, and the next time I will likely use my old stand-by drop biscuit recipe which calls for a full cup of buttermilk.

As one old cooking mentor told me, in respect to biscuits, when I first started cooking, "honey, you want that biscuit dough to shimmy and shake; it should worry you." Or something like that (25+ years ago).

This was so marvelous I think I will lay my life long war with pie crusts aside forever, and only make cobblers. As some others have suggested I added a tap of cinnamon to the fruit and a squeeze of lemon, plus some lemon zest to the biscuits. About 3/4 of the fruit was blueberries— I had a couple peaches, an apricot and a cup or 2 of cherries I threw in also. My husband usually turns up his nose at fruit desserts but he loves this !

I wonder if frozen fruit would work in this recipe. Frozen fruit is often better than fresh out of season. One thing I would definitely do is to peel peaches and other fuzzy fruits if using the fresh fruit. With the price of fresh fruit nowadays, I might have to settle for the artificial kind.

Wonder if we can substitute tapioca with corn starch?

Francisco, One can sub corn starch for the minute tapioca BUT keep in mind the chemistry of cornstarch. It breaks down (loses thickening) if cooked for a long time or mixed with acidic elements or frozen and then thawed. If you do decide to use cornstarch in this recipe, use about half as much as the minute tapioca. But the tapioca option is my long time fav for berry and stone fruit cobblers or pies. Give it a try!