Summer is berry season! Blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries. Not to mention other fruits that are plentiful at this time of year like peaches, grapes, and figs.
Though these fruits are delicious all on their own, they are also excellent when combined with sugar and dough and baked! The most well-known fruit-filled dessert is almost certainly pie. Pie, as I hope we all know, is a dessert made using dough formed into a thin crust that contains a filling, usually a fruit filling. But pie is not the only way you can combine fruit and sugar and dough! Perhaps you’ve had one of the many variations, which all use different types of dough. These are the generally agreed upon names and descriptions:
Betty or Brown Betty – breadcrumbs or streusel layered at the top and bottom of the fruit filling
Buckles – cake batter mixed with fruit, sometimes with streusel topping
Cobbler – biscuit dough topping
Crisps – streusel-like topping containing oats
Crumbles – streusel or crumb topping, oat free
Grunt or Slump – Same as a cobbler, but cooked on a stove top
Pandowdies – Pie dough or bread layered on top of fruit
Maybe you’ve had them all! But did you know that many of these desserts were invented by early settlers of North America? When circumstances made it difficult for homesick immigrants to recreate desserts from back home, they improvised! They used what they had on hand, biscuits or pancake batter or strudel to top syrup-y fruit fillings and got a little taste of home.
Article "History and Legends of Cobbler | WhatsCookingAmerica.net, opens a new window
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