Sunday, August 19, 2007

A Cobbler, A Crisp, or A Betty?

My friend Heather asked for a recipe for cobbler. I'm not a big cobbler fan, probably for the same reasons she said in her comment, the recipes she's tried were just kind of blah. Anne Byrne, the Cake Mix Doctor gives these definitions: A cobbler is fruit and sugar topped with a pastry crust. A crisp is fruit and sugar covered with sweet, buttery crumbs and often nuts. A crumble is similar except the topping is denser and might contain oats. A buckle is a sweet batter baked up around a fruit topping. A betty is similar to a cobbler, but made with buttered bread cubes instead of a pastry. Now that we have our terms straight, I can tell you I prefer crumbles and crisps. I have two basic recipes I like to use and I will give you both of them because they are both fairly easy. Well, one is really easy and the other gets easier the more you make it. Heather, I hope this is what you were looking for.

The first one is the easies one because it uses a cake mix:

Fruit Crisp

2 - 16 oz bags of unsweetened frozen fruit or
6 cups fresh fruit
1 package plain yellow cake mix, white cake mix, or French vanilla cake mix
1 cup cold butter or margarine (2 sticks)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place fruit in the bottom of a 9 x 13 baking pan. Cover fruit with half of dry cake mix. Cut the butter into 1/2 inch pieces and scatter half of these on top of the cake mix. Top with remaining cake mix and remaining butter. Bake 60 - 65 minutes. Let cool 10 minutes. Serve with ice cream.

The next recipe is another wonderful one from my mother-in-law. I must give you a warning that you could end up with every teenage boy in a mile radius salivating at your door. At least that's what happens whenever I make it for a youth event or church supper. We have always called it Brown Betty, however from the definition above, it is more technically a crisp. I never measure this one so I will do my best to explain it in an easy way.

Brown Betty

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

4 - 6 cups fresh or frozen fruit
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 /2 tsp nutmeg

Place in a 9 x 13 pan and combine well. In a medium bowl combine with a pastry blender:

2 cups flour
1 1/2 cups white or brown sugar
1 cup margarine or butter

Spread over fruit. Bake 30 - 40 minutes until golden brown and bubbly.

Hope you like those!

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

What a Summer!

I hope most have you have had a more relaxing summer than we have. Since school ended all or a few in our family has been to Gundy, Virginia, two weeks of camp, Kansas City, Oklahoma, Mexico,
King's Island, Cedar Point, Indiana, Washington, DC, and New York City. Okay, I only actually did four of those trips and Ron did the rest. He finally will be home for good on Friday. And now you know why we homeschool. The kids are ready to see their daddy!

We also went through three cases of the worst stomach flu ever and my 93-year-old grandmother went home to be with Jesus. We'll miss her a lot but she was ready to go. It's sad how we wait until a funeral to have family reunions. All six of us cousins had not been together in 20 years. Isn't that pathetic? Mamaw would have loved us all being together with the kids running wild and dogs all over the place.

I'm don't have any recipes today because around here we've been eating a lot of hot dogs, frozen pizza, and fish sticks. If you look down in the comments though, Chris McDaneld gave a recipe for taco soup and anything Chris makes is incredible! Also, my friend, Jill, and I are in search of either a recipe or where I can buy the shrimp sauce they serve in Japanese restaurants. If any of you know how to make it or where to buy it, please post it on the comments.

If any of you would like to request a recipe let me know and I'll post it!