Not the effin’ apocalypse again 😶🌫️
And the Best Strawberry Cookie Cobbler in the World.
Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week we shelter in place. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Read past posts here, and please follow my Instagram, @fivethingsiate.
I was all excited to dig into cooking in my shiny (ish) new apartment, now with 300x more counter space (not saying much, as I previously had one cutting board’s worth of counter space), when the effin’ apocalypse hit again. That’s right. You can roll your eyes at me in California, but the wildfire smog rolled in from Canada over the Northeast, rendering NYC in shades of Mars, and I had to scramble for some KN95’s and an air purifier all over again. It has been a truly depressing week. But the one good thing is that I had just finished a grocery haul at the Fanciest Whole Foods when the haze took cover, and managed to pick up two pounds of fresh ripe strawberries.
Actually, there are two Very Good things in life right now, Climate Apocalypse aside: One, I have the most prized of all blessings, a Cat That Loves to be Held, and Two: For Some Unknown Reason, an Acupuncturist that is totally covered by health insurance?! And I would like to acknowledge those things.
It’s Strawberry Season right now, and I am eating fresh strawberries 24/7, with lightly sweetened whipped cream at each meal – Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Strawberries are my favorite berry and possibly my favorite fruit, if they were reliably delicious all the time. (Mango probably takes the cake, due to consistent sweetness.) Anyways, my friend made a fantastic strawberry cobbler for a Memorial Day barbecue, and when he asked me what I wanted to eat for my birthday dinner I said strawberry cobbler. But, then, because I am impatient and also stuck at home with all the windows shut and the air purifier on, I decided to make myself an early-early birthday strawberry cobbler because I couldn’t wait a few extra days.
Anyways, this strawberry cobbler was handed down to me in the form of a blurry scanned photo of an unknown cookbook, sent to me in an email, which is how you know it’s good and the friendship is also good. I was going to say I have no idea where it’s from, but then, because I literally work in an investigative newsroom lol I found the source in 30 seconds in the form of, and this is such a nostalgic blast from the past for me, someone’s PhD student website at the CS department at CMU. Fellow computer humans and PhD humans, remember when everyone would make their little HTML websites under the .edu website like this?! Do people still do this?? It makes me miss hanging out in the server room :’)
Anyways, the ratio of gab : Thing I Ate this week is already too high so without further ado here’s my adapted recipe.
Strawberry Butter Cookie Cobbler at Home (You best be at home, windows closed!)
Serves: 8x8 inch pan, or in my case 2 loaf pans, one to freeze later. Maybe 4-6. It depends on how much you love fruit cobbler.
Recipe adapted from Cook’s Illustrated, apparently, I think.
This is the world’s best fruit cobbler. It also makes your entire apartment smell like strawberry jam and butter, even with a smog index of like 400 outside.
First:
Preheat oven to 375F, and find two loaf pans or one 8x8 inch pan.
Strawberry cobbler filling
1 lb (16 oz) fresh ripe strawberries, washed, little green hats I forgot the name of removed, and cut into quarters.
2 tbs all purpose flour (original recipe uses 1 tablespoon of cornstarch, but I didn’t have any.)
⅓ -½ cup white sugar.
Dash of vanilla
Sprinkle of salt, just for me.
How: Mix all ingredients in a large bowl and set aside.
BUTTER COOKIE DOUGH TOPPING (Sophie: this is the best cobbler topping of all time. Also I put the mixing bowl on my scale all wonky so I possibly messed up the flour amount and it still turned out very very good!)
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch salt
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temp.
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 large egg or 1 yolk (Soph: Not sure why you would measure out half an egg when you can just use a yolk, which is richer, anyways.)
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt in small bowl; set aside.
2. Beat butter and sugar until well blended. If you do this by hand it takes 5 min and a lot of elbow grease. So use an electric mixer for like 2 minutes instead. Beat in egg and vanilla. Add flour mixture; stir until just combined.
Assemble:
Give the strawberry mixture a good stir, and divide evenly into two loaf pans, or into one 8x8 inch pan.
Drop dough onto prepared fruit by heaping tablespoons.
Bake until golden brown BUT NOT BURNING, 40-45 minutes for a large pan, 30-40 mins for loaf pans. Fruit should bubble and your apartment should smell exceedingly nice.
Serve:
With vanilla ice cream AND / OR freshly whipped cream. Don’t skip this step.
You can make cobbler several hours ahead and reheat before serving.
Enjoy :)
Soph
P.S. My birthday is next week! Why not get me the gift of a paid subscription to Five Things I Ate? Subscriptions are currently only $30 per year, and you gain access to all recipes in the archives, including my famous Pineapple Buns and Mama’s Scallion Pancakes.You will directly support my will to write.