Food Friday: Raspberry Cobbler

Okay, don't be mad.

...I'm repeating a recipe. But wait! I can justify it! It's not out of laziness, I promise.


I have truckloads of raspberries to use.

And, it's a really good recipe. I wouldn't give it to you again if it wasn't damn good.

I'm also throwing in a bonus lesson of how to freeze raspberries, so hopefully it's not a totally déjà vu experience for you.

At this point I really wish I had a kitchen scale, because I seriously think that I've been getting somewhere between 1-2 pounds of raspberries off my raspberry bush every day. And, that is NOT an exaggeration, folks. It's been really awesome, but I also have trouble keeping up.

This recipe calls for 2 generous cups of berries. Well, I had a LOT more than that (because I hadn't picked berries for a couple of days), so I doubled the recipe, and still had about 2 cups leftover. I'll tell you what I did with the rest some other time.

So then, I skipped picking berries again for a few days. Hey, I'm a busy gal. I've had two sets of parents in town this week, not to mention we wrapped up a bathroom remodel and threw in an electrical upgrade to our house for good measure. So excuse me if I skipped a few days. Geez.

Anyway, when I finally got around to picking them again, I think I had about 5 pounds of berries. And, no real plan to use them (at least not in the near enough future to keep them from going bad). Also, I figured out that if you leave them on the bush until the very last minute, they will keep longer. I knew I didn't have time to make anything on those days, so instead of picking the ripe ones and refrigerating them (which doesn't work all that well, honestly), I just left them on the bush and they were fine. It just means you have more to pick later, but it's kind of fun to pick berries so that's okay.

So, when I had this obnoxiously large supply of berries and no agenda, I kind of freaked out. Even though I can't use them all right now, I am afraid every day that the berries will run out. I just know one of these days I'm going to go out there, and they'll all be gone. And that, my friends, will be a sad, sad day. So, I refuse to throw any away or let them go bad. I will not allow it to happen. Not on my watch.

So, I did some research about how to freeze berries, and it turns out that raspberries are super easy to freeze (strawberries, blueberries, etc. I think are a little different, so if that's what you have, check into it a bit because there are a couple of extra steps). Just get a bowl of clean water, and submerge the berries a couple of handfuls at a time. Remove them with a slotted spoon and lay them out on a towel to dry (or you can probably use a paper towel if you don't want raspberry stains on your kitchen towels).

But be careful! Raspberries have this cute little hole in the middle where the water will like to hang out. You want to make sure this doesn't happen, because the more water that is surrounding the berry, the more ice crystals will form, and that breaks down the structure of the berry and contributes to freezer burn. So, what I did is turned them all upside down on the towel like this:

(Incidentally, my little 2 year old nephew likes to put his finger in that hole and wave it around a bit before he eats them. It's super cute.) And just let them sit for a while, pat them dry with another towel on top, and then you're ready to freeze them. After they've dried, lay them out flat on a cookie sheet (one that is small enough to fit in your freezer). Make sure they're flat, and not stacked on top of each other. Then put the cookie sheet in your freezer for one hour. This freezes the berries enough so that you can transfer them to another container and they won't stick to each other. Then, when you need to thaw some berries, you can just scoop out what you need and you don't have to worry about breaking them apart. Cool, huh?

Anyway, after they've been in there for an hour, you can take them out and put them in a freezer bag, Tupperware, or whatever and then return them to the freezer. They should keep for about 6-9 months. I read that it's best if you have one of those fancy schmancy vacuum sealers for this kind of freezing. But I don't have one, so I made my own:

I just put them in a freezer bag and zipped up the top until it was almost closed. Then I stuck a straw in the hole and sucked out as much air as I could. I'm sure it's not the best vacuum sealing job that was ever done, but it works for me.

A couple of recipe notes: You can obviously make this with any kind of berry. You know I've done it with blackberries before, but honestly, the raspberry is so much better. Also, I have made this with Splenda instead of sugar, and it's still damn good. The butter? I don't have any suggestions to make that healthier. And, the butter flavor really makes this recipe, so I wouldn't mess with it too much if I were you. Don't worry if you don't have self-rising flour on hand. I never have it, but you can make it yourself if you have all-purpose flour and it's super easy. For each cup of flour you need, just add 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Works every time.

Seriously, you should make this ASAP. It's the perfect summer dessert. Just add ice cream.

Pioneer Woman's Raspberry Cobbler
Remember I doubled this recipe.
Ingredients:

1 cup milk

1/2 cup butter (1 stick)

1 1/4 cup sugar

1 cup of self-rising flour

2 generous cups of raspberries (frozen or fresh)

Melt butter in a microwaveable dish. Pour 1 cup of sugar and flour into a mixing bowl, whisking in milk. Mix well. Then, pour in melted butter and whisk it all well together. Butter a baking dish. (Or, you can do what I did, and put the butter in the bottom of your pan while it's preheating in the oven. That melts the butter, and when you pour the batter into your pan, it doesn't mix completely and so you get little pockets of buttery goodness after it's baked. Mmmm. Plus you don't have to butter your dish. I love an excuse to skip steps.)

Now rinse and pat dry your berries. Pour the batter into the baking dish. Sprinkle berries over the top of the batter; distributing evenly. (I also sort of mush mine down into the batter a little bit. I don't know why, I just do. It's a compulsion.) Sprinkle 1/4 cup sugar over the top.

Bake in the oven at 350 for one hour, or until golden and bubbly. If you desire, sprinkle an additional teaspoon of sugar over the cobbler 10 minutes before it's done.