This recipe for rhubarb cobbler comes from Alice Medrich’s Flavor Flours, which is a gluten free cookbook that wasn’t being marketed as gluten free back in 2015 when it came out. Now it is. I’m not sure if it’s selling better, but it should be, because this woman can write a recipe. All you have to do is follow it and it’ll come out fine – usually, much better than fine.
I admit I like her custards better when made with egg rather than with gluten free flours and starch), but that wasn’t an issue with this cobbler.
What’s a cobbler?
A cobbler is a lot like crumble in that it’s a sweetened fruit base topped with a batter, but cobbler batter doesn’t have oats, so it’s more like dollops of biscuit batter. It’s a bit like pie but the biscuit topping is thicker and fluffier and doesn’t cover the whole thing, so the bubbling fruit juices pop out randomly. And there’s no bottom crust.
Cobbler is for anyone who like a high ratio of cake-y biscuit topping to fruit. But you can also increase the fruit on the bottom. Or skip the topping entirely and it becomes a compote. The trick, as with more fruit desserts, is getting the right amount of sugar, since strawberries are going to require less sugar than rhubarb. Or you can do a mix of both fruit. In all cases, the amount you sweeten will depend on how sweet you like it (I’m currently in Barbados and people here like cloyingly sweet – land of sugar cane, after all; I, on the other hand, tend more tart, at least when it comes to desserts…).
Medrich does all that testing for you. She and I tend to agree on sweet-and-sour balance. So when I was gifted some rhubarb from a friend’s garden (I’m too cheap to spend $5 on a handful of branches of it at the market when it grows like a weed), I made cobbler. My biscuit topping wasn’t very biscuity because I broke Medrich’s first rule: follow the recipe. I wanted to make it vegan, but my egg replacer was old and nothing rose. Because of that, it tasted a bit chalky. But when I mixed it into the sweet rhubarb bottom, keeping some of the crusty topping for texture with each bite, I really didn’t care.
Sometimes it’s nice to care less about what you eat. You might enjoy it more. Blissful ignore and all.
I can’t give this recipe because of copyright, but it’s worth buying the beautiful book and making her cinnamon sticks and chiffon and sponge cakes. It’s not that vegan friendly, because a lot of those recipes need eggs and egg replacer just won’t do, but lactose-free people will be fine. Almond milk and coconut milk and vegan butters will do the trick. Just don’t tell Medrich I said so. I’m less often right than she is.
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