Blackberries Are In

So, Erma, you have tomatoes in your garden? We have Blackberries! Which is almost as good.

As a child, I would go out and pick the wild ones in the fence rows, and always come down with both poison oak and chiggers, but the resulting blackberry jam was worth every itch. My grandmother made the best blackberry cobblers in the world. My grandfather would be out cutting hay or some other work in the far fields and he would find a mess of briars full of berries. No work was important enough for him that he wouldn’t stop and pick berries. In he would come to the house in the middle of the morning with his straw hat filled with blackberries, and for dinner (the noon meal for farmers) there would be a cobbler.

Grandmother’s cobblers were the deep-dish kind with a thick, sweet biscuit topping which I have never been able to replicate. This one with a pie dough pastry comes close in taste. Big hint, set your cobbler on an old cookie sheet as they always seem to bubble over the sides.

Fresh Blackberry Cobbler:

Pastry:
2 cups flour
Dash of salt
½ cup lard (Crisco today)
1/3 cup cold water
1 cup white sugar
¼ cup light cream

Blend the lard into the flour and salt with a pastry blender. Sprinkle on the water and make into a dough ball. Divide dough in half and let rest several minutes.

Roll out on lightly floured bread board with a rolling pin. Line a 8 x 8 heavy baking pan with the dough. Sprinkle on 3 tablespoons of the sugar on the dough, cover with wax paper and set in refrigerator until you are ready to fill the cobbler. Chill other dough half as well.

Filling:
5 cups blackberries
4 thin slices butter (about ¼ cup)
¾ cup sugar
2 teaspoons cornstarch

Fill the crust with the blackberries. Lay the butter slices over the berries and sprinkle on the ¾ cup sugar mixed with the cornstarch.

Roll out the remaining dough. Wet the rim of the dough in the pan and place the top crust over, pressing down all around to make a good seal. (Blackberry juice can make a mess if it seeps out of the cobbler.) Trim the edges. Make any kind of decorative edge you like. Cut several slits in the cobbler so steam can escape.

Brush the top of the cobbler with cream (evaporated milk works too) and sprinkle on the remainder of the 1 cup of sugar from the pastry recipe.

My recipe says to bake in preheated 425 degree oven for 45 minutes. I usually find that 15 minutes at 425 and then dropping to 375 degrees is better, but then my Jenn Aire oven seems to bake faster and quicker than some others.

Serve warm. In the old days, the cook would have served it with a dollop of fresh cream. Today who has access to real fresh cream straight from the cow, and if they do, who can afford the calories?