Here’s a healthy recipe… for your mental health

I really wanted to do a healthy recipe next, but apparently my stomach had other ideas, because instead I found myself buying apples to do my mother’s apple cobbler that I grew up eating. It’s actually properly called a clafouti, but it still falls in the cobbler class of desserts, so I keep calling it that. You can do it with really any type of fruit, but with all the great apples around right now, it’d be a shame not to use them. Other favorite fruit combinations of mine are triple berry, blackberry nectarine, and I’ve recently been pondering a pear with grated gruyere in it, courtesy of Pushing Daisies.

Now, to make this dish, you start by putting a stick of butter in a baking dish into a cold oven, and preheating the oven to 400 degrees. As the oven warms, it will melt the stick of butter and give it some nice browning. You just have to be careful not to forget about it and burn the butter.

While that is going on, get out a large mixing bowl and mix together 2 cups of flour, 2 cups of sugar, 4 teaspoons of baking powder, and 1 1/2 cups of milk.

You can also wash and slice your fruit so that is ready as well. In this case, I used apples mixed with some pumpkin pie spices and freshly grated nutmeg, to give it that real fall feeling.

Once the butter is melted and the oven is preheated, remove the pan from the oven, pour the batter in, and swirl it around with your spoon to incorporate the butter into the batter. Then top your batter and butter mixture with the fruit. Don’t mix it around, just drop the fruit right on top of the batter. It will rise and cover the fruit when it bakes. Next, cover your fruit with one last cup of sugar to give it a nice crispy crust. I used brown sugar instead of the usual white grandulated kind today, because I felt like a little more caramel flavor would go well with the apple and pumpkin pie spices.

Now bake in your preheated oven at 400 degrees for 40 minutes or more, until the top is nicely browned. The batter will still be a little undercooked and gooey, but I like it that way. Feel free to cook lower and longer if you prefer a completely cooked dough. And once it’s all done, feel free to top with vanilla ice cream or, as I did last night, some of the caramel bourbon vanilla sauce I posted about last time.

Fruit Cobbler

Ingredients:
1 stick of butter
2c flour
3c sugar
1 1/2c milk
4 tsp baking powder
6 cups diced fruit (2 bags of frozen fruit)

Directions:
Place stick of butter in 9×13 baking pan and place pan in cold oven. Turn oven to 400 degrees and start preheating. In a bowl, mix together flour, 2 cups of the sugar, the milk, and the baking powder. Once butter has melted in the oven, remove baking pan and pour dough mixture into it, stirring around to incorporate butter. Top with fruit, then sprinkle remaining 1 cup of sugar on top. Bake for 40 minutes or more, until top is nicely browned.