crisps and cobblers – covered in flour

How’s this for a transition dish? The last of summer’s beautiful, mouthwatering pluots, combined with the first of fall’s abundant apples, and topped with a crunchy, sweet oat crisp. Yes, please! This is seasonal food at its best… crisps are a fantastic option for summer and fall desserts because they welcome any fruit filling you can imagine. I think of fruit crisp as the quintessential farmers market dish: just pick the most delectable fruit you can find at your farmers market (or, better yet, at a local orchard – go to www.pickyourown.org to find one near you) and go nuts. Your dinner guests will love it!

Apple Pluot Crisp

Fruit Filling
5 pluots
3 medium apples
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
pinch salt

Crisp topping
1 cup flour
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup sugar
4 tablespoons butter, cubed
pinch salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Prepare fruit: peel and core apples, then chop into medium-large chunks. Bring a pot of water to a boil; score the bottoms of the pluots with “x” marks and drop them in the boiling water. Allow pluots to boil for 30-45 seconds, then remove and place in cold water immediately. Peel pluot skins off (they should come off easily now) and core and chop pluots. Mix apples and pluots together in a medium bowl. Add salt, sugar and cornstarch and toss to coat evenly.
Combine flour, oats, sugar and salt in a separate bowl; whisk together. Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter or two knives (alternatively, combine dry ingredients in a food processor, then pulse in the butter).
Spread fruit filling out in 8×8 baking dish. Cover evenly with crisp topping. Bake for 50-55 minutes, until fruit is cooked through and topping is golden brown. Serve with homemade vanilla bean ice cream.

Source: Covered In Flour, inspired by The Barefoot Contessa

I was having a really lousy day on Friday. Part of my lousy day – though not all – was due to the fact that I had ordered a new baking book from Amazon on Wednesday, or started to, anyway. I guess I never completed the order (dratted short attention span) and I had the unpleasant surprise on Friday morning of finding out that the book I expected that afternoon was still sitting in my virtual shopping cart, and not on a delivery truck as I had thought. This made me extremely cranky, so I did what I always do when I am cranky – I wrote a list of grievances and emailed it to the hubs. Because he loves to help, and because he knows I love to bake on the weekends, my book arrived at my door the very next day on a rush order. Does it get sweeter than that? He deserved a special treat after this one, so bang, on goes the apron and out of the kitchen comes this:

Blueberry Cobbler with Cornmeal Biscuit

Fruit Filling
1/4 cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 dry pints blueberries (fresh, if possible)
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

Cornmeal Biscuit
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 cup cold cream (the recipe calls for heavy, I used light)
4 teaspoons turbinado sugar

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter a 2-quart baking dish.
Combine sugar, cornstarch and salt in a large bowl. Add blueberries and toss to coat. Gently stir or fold in lemon juice. Spoon the blueberry mixture into the prepared baking dish.
To make the biscuits, whisk together flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add the butter and cut in with a pastry cutter, or rub in with your fingers (more fun) until the butter is the size of peas. Pour in the cream and stir to combine.
Divide the dough into 8 pieces – if you use a standard-sized ice cream scoop, you will have just enough – and pat into biscuits. Place over the fruit filling, then sprinkle with the turbinado sugar.
Bake 45 minutes, until the biscuits are golden and the fruit filling is bubbling up. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Thanks for the book, honey!

Source: Adapted from Rustic Fruit Desserts, by Cory Schreiber and Julie Richardson