Blackberry Cobbler | Yankee Recipe Archives (1992)

To celebrate Yankee‘s 80th anniversary in 2015, The Yankee Seeker will spend the year cooking and baking from the vast and colorful Yankee Magazine recipe archives. Will the retro results of this week’s Blackberry Cobbler hold up to today’s tastes? We can’t wait to find out! If you’re like me, you mark the passage of time in the summer by what’s in season at the farmers’ market, and (for fruits, anyway) late July is blackberry season. In search of a good blackberry recipe, I turned once more to the trusty Yankee archives, and found this recipe for Blackberry Cobbler from the Barrington Inn in New Shoreham, RI. It was included in an April, 1992 feature on breakfast food, and while you certainly can enjoy cobbler for breakfast, I think it also makes the perfect summer dessert.

Blackberries are a bramble fruit, meaning they grow in an impenetrable (meaning thorny) thicket. One way blackberries differ from their raspberry cousins is the stem. Picked blackberries “keep” their stem end, while raspberries don’t, leaving a hollow core inside the berry. Blackberries are delicious baked into muffins, cakes, scones, pies, or mixed into cereal, yogurt, or even pancake batter, but I love them in this easy blackberry cobbler. First, get your hands on a few cups of beautiful, ripe blackberries. Frozen works, too.

Then, heat them with some water and sugar until the mixture is hot and the berries have softened (I think I let mine cook a little too long, but it still worked). While the berries are cooking, mix together a simple batter of flour, milk, and cinnamon.

To assemble the cobbler, melt some butter in a casserole dish and then spoon the batter on top. On top of that, spoon the cooked berries. It will look like this – how’s that for big, bold summer berry color?

While the cobbler bakes, the dough will rise up into a cake around the berries, almost completely hiding them underneath, but don’t worry… they’re in there.

To serve, cut the cobbler into squares and top with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or some fresh whipped cream. Pure summer sunshine on a plate! Are you a fan of blackberries? Which summer berry is your favorite? In the next “Yankee Seeker Meets Yankee Archives” we’ll be tackling a fresh summer vegetable and seafood dish, so stay tuned!

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