Super-Easy Very Berry Cobbler

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before on here, but I’m not a berry person.  It’s only recently that I convinced myself that raspberries, strawberries, and blackberries won’t kill me.  I still stay far away from blueberries – they definitely go squish when you eat them, and ain’t nobody got time fo that.  Last week berries were on sale at the store so I picked up a thing of blackberries and a thing of raspberries.  I was beginning to get concerned that I would actually have to eat them in their natural state when, snuggled up and watching the Pioneer Woman the other day, I realized I could turn them into a cobbler.  I definitely could have thrown the berries in the freezer and forgotten about them for a bit longer, but I thought the mature thing to do would be to make something edible.  Covered in ice cream or whipped cream, I might be able to fool myself into eating them.

The recipe I used was super easy.  You can click here for it.  It’s definitely not the most healthy – people who complain about the butter Paula Deen uses have clearly never seen the Pioneer Woman cook.  I cut the butter back a bit – from 1/2 a cup to about a 1/3 of a cup, and my batter was still swimming in butter.  I ended up adding uncooked oats to try and soak up some of the butter, but it’s definitely still moist and decadent.

Here’s the recipe as I made it:

• 1 cup self-rising flour {if you don’t have self rising, it’s really easy to make; just add 1tsp+1/2tsp baking soda and 1/2tsp salt}
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup milk (I used almond unsweetened almond milk)
• 1/3 cup butter
• 7 tablespoons (not the measure but the soup spooned size of silverware, probably between a 1/4 and a 1/2 a cup) organic uncooked oats.
• a generous cup of berries – half blackberries and half raspberries.  The recipe called for twice as many, but I was working with what I had in house.

You mix the flour, sugar and milk together before whisking in your melted butter.  {I find that 30 seconds in the microwave is just about the perfect time for melting butter – anything less than that and you still have chunks; anything more and you really have to be careful that it doesn’t explode everywhere.}  After the butter, I added my oats.  Grease your pan – I used a smallish stoneware oval dish, maybe 10 inches by 7 at the widest part.  Dump the batter in the greased dish.  Sprinkle the berries in.  Then sprinkle some sugar on top to caramelize.  I only used a teaspoon – the 1/4 cup that it calls for seemed absurd.  You’re supposed to bake at 350 for an hour.  I baked it for an hour and fifteen minutes, then shut the oven off and left it inside because I had to go out and it still didn’t look done.  When I came home, I put the oven back on for about 20 minutes because it still didn’t look done.

I let it cool overnight and just cut some off to taste.  Maybe it’s too buttery for breakfast (although I did just have leftover sushi for breakfast, which was delicious), or maybe it’s too summery for a snowy end of March.  I think I’ll bring it to a thing I’m going to tonight and see what other people think.  I might be berry biased.  What did you have for breakfast today?  Anything crazy like sushi, or something more normal?

Here are some berry cobbler pictures.  You can see it step by step.  The last picture is the cobbler flipped over after it was back in the oven, so you can see how golden it got on the bottom.  Let me know if you try it what you think.  I’m thinking it might be a dish that other people like even if it’s not my fave yet.