Spiced plum cobbler

This cobbler has a light cake topping and a rich syrupy spiced plum base.

Ingredients
600g plums, chopped
4tbsp sugar
1tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp nutmeg
rind and juice of small orange

topping
100g self raising flour (40%urid, 40% tapioca, 20% cornmeal and 1tsp baking powder to 100g flour)
50g cold butter
50g sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 egg
rice or other milk to produce soft dropping batter


Cook the plum mixture until the plums are beginning to soften.  Place in either one medium pie dish or two smaller ones (I like to make two so I can freeze one).

Cut the cold butter into small pieces, toss in the flour, then rub together, either with your fingers or a quick whizz in a food processor.  Stir in the sugar and spice, then the egg and milk.

Carefully spoon the cake mixture on top of the fruit.  Cook in a medium oven (175C fan) for 25-30 minutes until the top begins to brown and the cake is cooked all the way through.

This easy pudding can be made with any variety of fruit.

Summer berry cobbler, gf, tapioca free and corn free

I've given up eating foods make with my new tapioca free flour blend as I think the buckwheat causes me gut ache.  However, I have a batch already ground and mixed to use up, so I have been continuing to test it with some of my usual recipes; others will have to eat them.  I'm planning to test my oreo-style cookies for when the grandchildren visit next week.

This fruit cobbler is one of our standard puddings -good with apples in the winter and raspberries in the summer, or any other of fruit you have handy.  This cobbler is made with cherries (still have a few morello cherries in the freezer from our trees last year), and frozen blueberries and raspberries from the store.  The combination of the lousy weather and the sprained ankle means I haven't been to any pick-your-own fruit farms this year.

Oven 175C fan

adjust the proportion of fruit to cake to your own taste

Ingredients
600g fruit
75g sugar (to your own taste and depends on the ripeness and type of fruit used)

175g flour (this is one third each buckwheat, urid and brown rice)
4tsp baking powder
75g sugar
75g butter or other fat suitable for baking
1 egg
150 ml milk - I used rice milk

Mix fruit with sugar and put in a dish with plenty of extra room.  Don't be tempted to squeeze it into a dish that doesn't leave plenty of head room as the fruit will bubble up past the cake in the oven and make a mess.

Mix flour, baking powder and sugar together.  Mix in butter by rubbing into the fat with your finger tips, or whizz in a food mixer.  Stir in egg and milk.  It should make a batter that is easy to dollop onto the fruit. Add more milk if needed, or if you want to increase the protein levels use an exra egg and less milk.

Spoon carefully onto the fruit.  Bake at 175 for about 45 minutes.

If the top is getting brown before the cake is cooked lower the heat.  You can test for doneness by sticking a knife in - you shouldn't see any gooey cake mixture.

If you put the batter onto frozen fruit the pudding will need longer for the cake next to the fruit to cook.

Serve hot or cold.  This pudding freezes well.

Apple cobbler using frozen topping

I froze cobbler topping in July, thinking this might be an easy way of making a fruit pudding with very little effort.  I froze spoonfuls on a baking sheet, then put them in a plastic bag once they were solid.

Today I made a lot of apple sauce for the freezer, and put some in a baking dish with these cobbler blobs on top.  I sprinkled the whole thing with some demerera sugar and cinnamon and put it in the over at 180C for twenty minutes and then lowered the temperature to 160C for a further fifteen minutes.

The cobbler is fluffy in the middle and crisp on top - an excellent partner to the tart apple base.  This is such an easy way to be able to have a pudding, and the cobbler doesn't take up much room in the freezer.  Being frozen in individual spoonfuls means you can make a one person desert it you want.

Gooseberry cobbler - with frozen dough

I made a cobbler with blackberries yesterday, and froze half the dough to see how it would work used straight from the freezer.  I took frozen gooseberries, put them into a small dish with a teaspoon of sugar, and placed the piece of frozen cobbler dough on top.  I cooked this for 30 minutes in a 180C oven.

The cobbler worked well and the fruit was succulent.  This is a very easy way of making an individual pudding or a family sized one, having done all the work whenever it is convenient.

For any international readers. the English call gooseberries a small hard very sour fruit with prickles on the berries.  These prickles become too soft to notice in your mouth when eating, even though you can still see them in the photographs.  One of the clearest memories I have of my sense of dislocation when I came to England was being told we had been given a basket of gooseberries ( I envisaged Cape Gooseberries, Physallis, succulent orange berries in their individual paper case) and it was these hard sour prickly green things.

Blackberry cobbler

I had some frozen blackberries in the freezer, and needed a cobbler to photograph for the new cookery book.  Here is a very easy cobbler recipe.

I based the recipe on using one whole egg.  This made enough batter for two oval dishes 23cmx15cm, each enough for four portions.  I sometimes freeze a whole dish once cooked, but this time I froze half the dough as dollops on a non-stick sheet.  I'll blog how well these work cooked direct from frozen later.

Ingredients
175g flour (40%urid, 40% tapioca, 20 cornmeal)
4 tsp baking powder
75g butter or other fat suitable for baking
75g sugar
1 egg
75ml rice or other milk (add extra if dough too stiff)
15g flaked almonds (optional)

I used the food processor bowl to weigh and mix this dough but you can easily do it by hand, especially if you use a soft margarine.

Mix dry ingredients thoroughly.
Cut in butter until finely dispersed
Mix egg and milk together and stir into flour mixture


Place in dollops on top of the fruit.  Use whatever type of fruit you like and have handy.  You can easily adjust the ratio of fruit to topping to suit your own preferences.  There should be gaps between the dollops so that some of the fruit shows through when the pudding is cooked.

Sprinkle with flaked almonds if using.

Cook in a pre-heated over, 180C for 35minutes.

Test for doneness as you would any other cake - if a knife inserted into the cobbler comes out without uncooked dough sticking to it the pudding is done.  If you find it needs longer turn the temperature down to allow the mixture to cook without burning the top. If I use a lot of frozen fruit I find it can take an extra ten minutes for the cobbler to cook where it touches the fruit.