What’s not to love about springtime in Texas? It’s those few months between deer season and the scorching heat where we all huddle for pictures in bluebonnet fields and stock our freezers full of wild dewberries for jams and cobblers. For those of you that don’t know, a dewberry is very similar to a blackberry, but they grow in brambles rather than upright or arching vines. Fighting the stickers to get them makes them nearly worth their weight in gold, but their taste is well worth it! I highly recommend boots, jeans and gloves to make it through the adventure with fewer war wounds. We eat as many right off the vine as we put away in the bucket…so it’s a time consuming process.
Although they’re good any which way you eat them, we love a very simple cobbler. Milk, butter, sugar, flour, baking powder, salt and dewberries. It’s really that simple.
WHAT YOU’LL NEED:
- 1 stick of butter
- 1 1/4 c. sugar
- 1 c. flour
- 1 1/3 tsp. baking powder
- 1 c. milk
- 3 c. dewberries
- 2 tsp. cinnamon/sugar mix
DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease a medium baking dish.
2. Mix dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
3. Melt butter in a microwavable dish. Whisk milk into butter slowly.
4. Whisk butter and milk into dry ingredients until smooth.
5. Rinse dewberries in a colander. Drain and pat dry. Fresh or frozen works just fine. I used frozen here, and as I rinsed them, they softened up considerably.
After letting them drain for a couple of minutes, I dumped them out onto paper towels and patted the tops with more towels. They’re quite delicate (and lets face it, after braving the stickers and snakes to get them, you don’t want to smoosh them at the last minute) so be gentle.
6. Spray a medium sized baking pan with baking spray or smear with butter. I prefer a glass dish so I don’t have to guess how done the bottom of my cobbler is. When it starts looking done on top, I simply lift up the pan and check out the bottom. Cheating? Maybe. But I’m ok with that.
7. Sprinkle berries evenly on top.
8. Sprinkle cinnamon/sugar evenly on top of berries. I enlisted help for this.
9. Put it in a 350 oven for 45-50 minutes, until the crust has risen above the berries and is a beautiful golden brown. The sugar will brown the top edges, so don’t panic if it starts to look burnt. Again, I cheat and look at the bottom. I like mine about the same color as the top. Mmmm, please ignore the bite out of the corner. It was too irresistible to wait another second to try.
Let it cool a few minutes before serving warm with a scoop of Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla, or wait and eat it later. It really doesn’t matter if you wait. It’s ridiculously delicious…warm, cool, or cold; breakfast, lunch or dinner.
Leave a Reply