Texas-Style Blueberry Cobbler

Easter Sunday went the way I had hoped. I want to write that down because Easter in this household has, for seven years, not been the kind of day worth writing down, and yesterday was. Six people at our kitchen table. The lasagna came out of the oven golden on top with the pesto cream sauce pooling between the layers in the way the magazine covers promise but rarely deliver.

Linda Briggs, Mr. Briggs’s wife, turned out to be a retired librarian from the main branch of the Tulsa Library, with a soft careful voice and steel-grey hair pinned up the way librarians pin their hair. She spent a portion of the dinner asking me about my notebook in a way that I now realize was probably steering me toward the Tulsa Library’s teen writing program, which she mentioned three different times in the same hour.

Mrs. Tilford prayed over the table the way she would have at her own. Aunt Tammy cried twice, both times into her napkin, both times for reasons she did not announce. Mama was at the head of the table for the first time in seven years and she did the small reign-of-Mama thing where she gets up to refill everybody’s water glass and then somehow has eaten by the time you look back at her plate. The lasagna got eaten down to one final square that Mrs. Henderson took home wrapped in foil. Mr. Briggs gave a brief small toast to Shelly Moreland and the daughter she raised, and Mama looked at me and held my gaze for a long second.

And Monday I made the Texas-style blueberry cobbler from a recipe that had been in my notebook since last summer. Texas-style cobbler, if you have not had it, is the kind where a self-rising biscuit batter is poured over the fruit in the pan, instead of being dropped in scoops the way a Northern-style cobbler is. The batter rises around the fruit while it bakes, producing a buttery golden crust with patches of bubbling blueberries showing through. The bottom stays saucy. The top stays buttery.

The math: a quart-size freezer bag of blueberries from last summer’s Aldi freezer-project, about three cups, free since I had paid for them in July. A cup of self-rising flour, a cup of sugar, a cup of milk, a stick of butter melted, a teaspoon of vanilla, a pinch of cinnamon. Total cost: about $1.20 for the cheapest cobbler I have ever made.

The technique is the pour-not-stir method. You melt the stick of butter directly in the 9-by-9 baking pan in the oven while it preheats — the butter coats the pan and infuses the bottom of the cobbler. You whisk the flour, sugar, milk, vanilla, and cinnamon in a separate bowl. You pour the batter directly into the melted butter in the pan without stirring. You scatter the frozen blueberries over the batter without stirring. You bake at 350 for forty-five minutes. The batter rises around the blueberries. The bottom develops a buttery crust. The top sets to gold.

I served it Monday afternoon at five with a scoop of vanilla ice cream from the Aldi freezer aisle and the rest of Aunt Tammy’s coconut cake on the side. Mama and I ate at the kitchen table for an hour, talking about the Easter dinner the day before. Mama said, baby, that was the best Easter I can remember. I said, I know, Mama.

Linda Briggs called Mama on the phone Monday afternoon to say thank you and to mention the Tulsa Library teen writing program a fourth time. The fourth time was on me. I am going to look into the program. Application window is in May. I am writing it down so I will not forget.

The twelfth Saturday visit at the unit. Cody came in carrying his first short story, hand-written on three pages of the unit’s lined notebook paper, in his careful slanted handwriting. He was nervous about it. He read me the first page out loud at the visiting table, in a quiet voice. The story is about a man at an auto-body shop who finds a stray dog under a parked car. I am not going to write more about it because the story is Cody’s. I am going to write down that he wrote it.

The recipe is below, the way Mel’s Kitchen Cafe wrote it. The trick I want you to keep is the no-stirring — pour the batter into the melted butter and scatter the fruit on top. Let the cobbler form its own layers in the oven.

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 45 min | Total Time: 55 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar, divided
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup whole milk
2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Vanilla ice cream or whipped cream, for serving (optional)

Instructions

Preheat and melt butter. Preheat your oven to 350°F. Place the butter in a 9x13-inch baking dish and set it in the oven while it preheats, just until the butter is melted. Swirl to coat the bottom of the dish and set aside.
Make the batter. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, 3/4 cup of the sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add the milk and vanilla extract and stir until just combined — a few small lumps are fine. Do not overmix.
Pour batter over butter. Pour the batter evenly over the melted butter in the baking dish. Do not stir. The butter will rise up around the edges and that’s exactly what you want.
Prepare the blueberries. Toss the blueberries with the remaining 1/4 cup sugar and the lemon juice. Scatter them evenly over the top of the batter. Do not press them in or stir — just drop them on top.
Bake. Bake uncovered for 40 to 45 minutes, until the top is deep golden brown and the batter has risen up around the fruit. The edges should be slightly crisp and pulling away from the pan.
Rest and serve. Let the cobbler cool for at least 10 minutes before serving so the filling can set slightly. Scoop into bowls and serve warm with vanilla ice cream or a dollop of whipped cream if you have it.

Nutrition (per serving)

Texas-Style Blueberry Cobbler — The Day-After-Easter Dessert from the Frozen Blueberry Hoard