Cranberry and Apple Cobbler Recipe

Cobblers are dishes of a stew base with a pastry, dumpling or scone topping. For a cobbler the toping needs to be either uneven or overlapping. In essence, the topping, when viewed above has the appearance of cobblestones, hence the dish's name.

Cobblers can be either savoury or sweet and they work wonderfully well either way.

The version presented here is for a classic dessert cobbler.

Cranberry and Apple Cobbler

Serves:6

Ingredients:

For the Filling:

450g cooking apples, peeled, cored and thickly sliced
450g frozen cranberries
finely-grated zest of 1 orange
juice of 1 orange
pinch of ground cloves

For the Cobbler Topping:

50g butter
225g self-raising flour
pinch of salt
50g caster sugar
150ml milk
Method:
Combine the apples and 375g of the cranberries in a pan with the orange zest, orange juice and the cloves. Allow the fruit to poach gently for about 18 minutes, or until the apples are juice and tender. Take off the heat and set aside to cool.

For the cobbler topping: Sift together the flour and salt into a bowl. Dice the butter, add to the flour mix and rub in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in the sugar then chop the remaining cranberries and stir these in as well.

Add the milk, mixing it in with a blunt knife until you have a soft, sticky, dough. Tip the dough out onto a floured work surface and roll out to about 2cm thick. Cut out rounds from this using a fluted 5cm diameter pastry cutter.

Spoon the poached fruit mixture into a medium-sized ovenproof baking dish. Arrange the pastry rounds against the edge of the dish, overlapping them slightly and leaving a gap in the centre. Brush the top of the rounds with a little milk to glaze then transfer to an oven pre-heated to 220ºC (410ºF, Gas Mark 7) and bake for about 12 minutes, or until the cobbler topping is golden brown.

Serve hot, accompanied by double cream.

See the Celtnet dessert and pudding recipes pages for thousands more classic dessert recipes.