Friday, June 3, 2011

Cobbler vs Crisp

I don't make fruit pies because I am not very good with crusts but I make a lot of crisps. I often confuse crisp and cobbler because they are similar but they are not the same.
They both start out the same - a fruit concoction with a topping but it's the toppings that make them different.
Crisps have an oatmeal based topping while cobblers are more biscuit or bread based. In fact I have seen cobbler recipes use canned biscuits.
To make a crisp (which to me it the easiest of the two) - I take the fruit of my choice. If it's fresh/frozen fruit then I layer it in the bottom of a greased casserole dish, sprinkle with white or brown sugar (based on the sweetness of the fruit) and top with a mixture of 1 stick butter, 1 cup brown sugar and about 2 cups oatmeal. I don't really measure but mix them together until I get a somewhat dry "batter" (similar in texture to cookie dough) which I plop on the fruit. Sometimes I flatten parts of the dough into pancakes and use them to top the fruit, just depends on my mood. If you use canned fruit then don't sprinkle with sugar and depending on the amount of syrup, you may want to slightly drain. You should have a decent amount of syrup but not soup.
I don't have a great cobbler recipe, yet but that what the experiment time is for. We start our pie experiments either Sunday or Monday so be on the lookout for lots of fun recipes coming this way.

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