Strawberry Cobbler

Listen, I know talking about the weather is boring. And I know I do it all the time anyway. But here I go, about to do it again, because temperature management has been a big old saga for us for the last couple of months. You Southerners might be inclined to laugh at me when I say we were struggling with a heatwave that put us in the upper-80s/lower-90s for a week or so (“oh, darlin’—the horror”), but what if I told you that, while this was happening, the heat was also running in our apartment, and we couldn’t turn it off? That our one measly window AC unit, running on full blast, wasn’t enough to combat the hot air wafting from our radiators? That our bedroom was so unbearably muggy that we slept on our fold-down couch in the living room for upwards of a month? Because that’s exactly what happened.

We finally, finally convinced our building manager that something was really wrong, and last week, our apartment returned to a livable temperature. I don’t know if I’ve ever slept as well as I did the night we moved back to our real bed for the first time in weeks. And, best of all, I’m cooking again! …well, cooking comfortably, anyway. It’s not like the heat stopped me.

After acquiring a basket of perfect strawberries at the farmers market in late June, I knew I needed this cobbler in my life, regardless of the extra warmth the oven was bound to churn into our already-toasty apartment. I had just run across the recipe in Dining In (there’s another blockbuster cookbook for you), which I read cover to cover, and in which I eventually stopped flagging recipes to try, because I was basically flagging every page. The promise of strawberry shortcake without the effort of assembling and plating each individual dessert was too good to pass up.

There was one tiny problem, though: the shortcake portion of the recipe called for room temperature butter. I hardly consider myself a biscuit expert, but I could have sworn that one of the cardinal rules of biscuit-making is that the butter needs to be cold. After a flurry of Googling and cookbook consulting, I just could not get comfortable with the idea of using softened butter, and since I was making the cobbler for company, I decided to go with my gut. The biscuits turned out great, but I couldn’t stop wondering what would have happened if I’d followed the recipe to the letter; I’ve had great success with this book, and its author’s recipes more broadly, so I felt inclined to trust her. There was nothing for it but to make a second cobbler– for research purposes, of course.*

Let me just say that it’s a good thing I already had attractive photos at the ready for this post, because my second cobbler was fugly. It wasn’t the biscuits’ fault– I made my classic mistake of letting the filling bubble up and spill out of the baking dish, onto the hot floor of the oven. Are there some lessons in life we just cannot make ourselves learn? If so, this is one of mine.

While the second round of biscuits, made with the softened butter, was perfectly fine, I stand by my original decision to use cold butter like I was raised to do. (Little leavening joke there– thank yooooou). The difference was that the cold butter biscuits were flaky, light, and layered, whereas the softened butter biscuits were sandy and crumbly like shortbread. Both are perfectly acceptable cobbler toppings, but for me, if I’m going to go to the trouble of making biscuits (as opposed to a quick stir-and-pour cobbler batter, a-like this), I want ’em flaky. So there you have it.

Aside from the biscuits, the cobbler is the easiest thing to make. Toss sliced strawberries with some sugar, cornstarch, and citrus, top with biscuits, brush biscuits with cream, sprinkle with sugar, pop in the oven, done. Oh yeah– top with ice cream, too. That’s essential.

You’ll notice the stringed instruments looking very blurry in the background there, and the cute boy torsos holding said instruments in the top photo. Hi, Alex! Hi, Will! Thanks for the tunes! If you can find some people to have a pickin’ party while you bake this, I highly recommend that approach.

Strawberry Cobbler
adapted from Dining In by Alison Roman

*NOTE: It didn’t dawn on me until I flipped open the book to jot down the recipe that it says, plain as day, that the biscuits are– ahem– SHORTCAKES. Hence the room temperature butter. I even called them shortcakes repeatedly in my own post. Don’t anybody mind me, I’m a dummy.** Carry on, y’all.

**Except, now that I’ve Googled a bunch of shortbread recipes, I can see that many of them are also made with cold butter. So who knows. Nothing means anything.

for the shortcakes biscuits:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cornmeal (I’ve been using fine-ground, since that’s what I have on hand)
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
2 Tablespoons granulated sugar
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/2 cup (1 stick)  cold butter, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup heavy cream

for the filling:
5 cups strawberries, hulled and halved (and by “hulled,” I mean “just lop the tops off”)
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 Tablespoons corn starch
1 Tablespoons lime or lemon juice

2 Tablespoons heavy cream
2 Tablespoons brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, cornmeal, sugars, baking powder, and salt. Using your hands, work the butter into the flour mixture until no large chunks remain. Add the cream and mix gently until just blended. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and knead the dough for a minute or so, until it’s no longer sticky.

Form the dough into a circle about 1 inch thick. Use a 2-inch cookie cutter to punch out the biscuits. After you’ve cut all the biscuits you can out of the dough, gently bring the scraps back together with your hands, pat back into a circle, and punch more biscuits.

In a medium bowl, toss the strawberries with the sugar, cornstarch, and juice (lime and lemon are equally good!). Transfer the berries to a pie plate or cake pan and arrange the biscuits on top. Brush the biscuits with the cream and sprinkle with the brown sugar.

Bake until the biscuits are golden brown and the strawberry juices are thickened and bubbly (preferably not bubbling over the sides of the pan), about 40 minutes.