Special Ingredient.... Blueberry!!!!

It's that time of year when you walk into Costco with a grocery list and end up with about $20 more added to the bill because you couldn't resist the cases of fresh peaches, plums, and plastic containers of berries. I had no problems eating the dozen or so white peaches but what was I going to do with all those blueberries?

One of my colleagues reminded me that I still haven't brought in a blueberry cobbler, even though I've been teasing him with that idea for the last two years. I've never baked a blueberry cobbler. What recipe should I use? Should it have a streusel topping, or a biscuit one? Should I make muffins instead? Or try that blueberry boy bait recipe I saw on another blog? Too many choices and too little time.

So I found two recipes on Allrecipes.com that would work for me. It was a weeknight and I didn't want to do anything too fancy. But, which one should I do? Both??!!! Did I have the energy?

So the first one is the Very Best Blueberry Cobbler recipe. It was pretty straightforward and allowed for both fresh and frozen blueberries, which I had. I took some pictures but since I was baking in the evening, I couldn't figure out how to manipulate the lighting with my point and shoot for more natural lighting, so please bear with me. Another tiny detail I'll have to work around the next time I bake at night.

Here's a picture of the topping before I let it sit for ten minutes. Be sure not to overmix. I also made a mini cobbler so that I can taste test it before taking it into work. The butter, sugar, vanilla and lemon juice has been added.

Topped with cinnamon and sugar, the biscuit batter had "fluffed up" in the ten minutes I let it rest. I followed the recipe instructions and left some holes for the berries to bubble through.

The larger pie required a good twenty minutes more in my oven than the stated twenty five minutes in the recipe. But the topping came out slightly crispy on top and soft and fluffy inside. But like some of my past pie-making experiments, I had a little too much syrup-y juices on the bottom; like blueberry soup.

The second recipe was the Easy Batter Fruit Cobbler also from Allrecipes.com. I liked this recipe because it was really easy to make. Warm up the pie pan in the oven with the butter until melted, mix your batter up, pour it in, scatter the fruit on top and into the oven it goes!

Again, we have to taste test so a mini cobbler was made for this one too. I can't show my face at work with a less-than-acceptable-cobbler!! I'll lose my guinea pigs for my other baking experiments.

This recipe baked up much more quickly. The edges were slightly crispy and when scooped, the cobbler was much more solid.

Here are the two cobblers next to each other.

So the next day, I brought my cobblers in to work and labeled them A and B respectively. And to my surprise, I had some people love A, others love B and still others chose both. It seemed people who grew up eating cobblers with ice cream loved A, which was the Very Best Blueberry Cobbler. Others who liked the taste of the fresh blueberries liked B, the Easy Batter Fruit Cobbler.

In the future, I will have to find another baker to "challenge" so that I don't have to do both myself but this was definitely a good experience for me. I have had many pie-baking disasters in my baking past and found the cobblers to be a great alternative!