Cobbler, Crisp, or Sonker and Who's Betty?

  What is a...

~ Cobbler…a deep-dish fruit dessert or pie with a thick biscuit crust and a fruit filling

~Crisps…Crisps are baked with the fruit mixture on the bottom, crumbs on top. The crumb topping can be made with flour, nuts, bread crumbs, oatmeal,  cookie or graham cracker crumbs.

~Crumble…British version of the Crisp.

~Betty… fruit, baked between layers of buttered crumbs. Crumbs can be nuts, bread crumbs, cookie or graham cracker crumbs.

~Grunts or Slump…same as a cobbler

~Pandowdy – kind of like a cobbler, but you use brown sugar instead of white and the crust is broken up during baking and pushed down into the fruit to allow the juices to come through.

~Sonker - a deep dish cobbler unique to North Carolina.

Blackberry Ginger Crisp

1 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup old fashioned oatmeal

1 cup ginger snaps, crushed

1 to 2 tbsp mayonnaise

2 cups blackberries, patted dry

Preheat oven to 375 F.

Soften the butter.

Mix the brown sugar, oatmeal and ginger snaps in with the butter.

Add mayonnaise as needed until you have a crumbly struesel binding together. 

Scatter half the struesel in an 8" x 8" baking dish, clumps are ok.

Next scatter the berries evenly on top. 

Finish with the remaining struesel.

Bake 35-45 minutes until you have bubbling, gooey deliciousness.

Serve over ice cream...vanilla is classic...peach a special treat...coffee is nirvana.

From "Garden Table: A Celebration of Bare feet, Fresh Picked Tomatoes and Not Waiting Until Sunday Night to Grill" by Mango Dragonfly.

I Am Sorry, But the Green Fleck's Are Only Zucchini

    

~I have always been pretty rough on the zucchini.  I really don’t bear them any ill will, but I have learned the hard way that with zucchini you must have a strong, definitive offense.  If you garden or live near a gardener, you know how quickly some friendly, neighborly exchanging can spiral down a slippery slope into shopping bags full of zucchini hanging on your door whenever you return home.  

      It is funny to me that we are such a waste-full society, trash cans and dumpsters overflowing with endless crap we are bored with or won’t bother to recycle, but no one will ever throw away a zucchini.  We serve them to our families four times a day…at first in salads and on crudité trays, then gratined, frittered, frittataed and casseroled… finally shredding and hiding them in pancake batter, smoothies and cookie dough.   

      We take a box full into work where they will sit because everyone knows if you are caught taking one, the next day a shopping bag full will be hanging off your desk chair. The smartest gardener/cook ever was whoever thought to stuff a zucchini blossom.  Personally, I have never had a batch turn out to be anything but a greasy mess…but I make them all the time, simply because it is an excellent guilt-free way to wipe out a generation of zucchini. 

Here is a perfect recipe for hiding zucchini...in retrospect, it seems a cruel trick to serve a plate of deliciously rich brownies with green flecks inside only to have it turn out to be zucchini.

Zucchini Brownies with Cream Cheese Frosting

11/4 cup butter, softened

11/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1/2 cup vanilla yogurt

2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup baking cocoa

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups zucchini, shredded

1 8 oz pkg cream cheese, softened

1 tsp. vanilla

4 cups powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Grease and flour a 9” x 13” cake pan.

Cream 1 cup butter and sugar together in a large bowl until light and fluffy.

Add the eggs, beating well after each one.

Beat in yogurt.

Combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl.

Add to the butter mixture, bit by bit until well mixed. 

Pour into the cake pan, bake for 35 minutes or until a toothpick poked in the center comes out clean.

Meanwhile, beat the cream cheese, 1/4 cup butter and vanilla in a large bowl until well blended.

Gradually add in the powdered sugar, beating constantly.

Frost the brownies when cool.