apricot cobbler
part of a category of fruit desserts that I will henceforth be calling "fruit with a hat"
What I’m reading: Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto - a novella sent to me by my brother for Christmas, and I really, really liked it. It’s set in Japan (first published in 1988), and deals with grief, friendship and love in a really soft, slow way - plus there are some gorgeous descriptions of food.
What I’m listening to: Dolly Alderton on Caroline O’Donoghue’s Sentimental Garbage about Robbie Williams. I could listen to these two for hours (but also wish the High-Low would return, no other podcast quite fills the void)
What I’m eating: lunch at Casita Miro on Waiheke Island (below). This was part of a pretty perfect day: ferry to Waiheke, walk on the beach, delicious lunch at Casita Miró (which is beautifully decorated in the style of Gaudí and Miró), and wine at Stonyridge.
A word of warning: this is quite likely to be another rant about pastry nomenclature (and stone fruits), so buckle up, put this song on (or perhaps this one) and enjoy (or skip to the recipe below - free for all subscribers this week) x
We are now well into stone fruit season in New Zealand, and I am pretty happy about it. We’ve been making lots of pastries with stone fruit at Mor (see below), and the shops and markets are overflowing with peaches, plums, cherries and apricots.
On Christmas Day in Russell with the girls, in a very lacklustre nod to the traditional plum pudding, we made plum crumble, which we served with ice-cream at the end of a very non-traditional Christmas dinner.
Stone fruits are without a doubt my favourite category of fruit. At their peak, they’re perfect raw, but are even more magical when roasted. My boss Loz made a nectarine and chamomile jam before Christmas that was easily my favourite jam I’ve ever eaten - there’s something about the texture of stone fruit once it’s been cooked that is so syrupy and jammy and gorgeous.
Another really cool thing about stone fruits is the noyau: if you crack open the stone of an apricot, for example, you’ll find a little seed that looks like an almond. This kernel can be used to infuse alcohols, syrups, custards etc. - and it gives them the most wonderful marzipan-y flavour. Although noyau literally just means “kernel”, it’s also the name given to a variety of liqueurs in France such as Crème de Noyaux. We’ve been using it at Mor for crème diplomat: we crack open the stones, roast the noyaux until golden brown, then use these to infuse the milk we use for crème pat (and later diplomat).
I think that stone fruits are at their best in a subset of desserts that I like to call “fruit with a hat”. This category includes any dessert that features a fruit (stone or otherwise) on the bottom, and some sort of buttery, sugary accompaniment on top. It could be apple sponge (famously my dad’s favourite): a simple sponge (with a ratio of 1:1:1:1 butter:sugar:self raising flour:egg) dolloped over roughly chopped Bramley apples and a handful of sugar. The apples cook down beautifully at the same time as the sponge bakes, resulting in a rustic, golden dessert that is pretty hard to beat. A crumble, of course, falls into this category: my favourite is rhubarb, with a topping comprised of flour, butter, sugar and maybe nuts or oats - which coalesces and caramelises on top of the tart pink fruit. Bliss.
This category would also include the likes of “crisp” and a “buckle”, which, to be honest, I’m not familiar with, but I can say with some confidence that they are very American, and I imagine them to be pretty delicious. I suppose a fruit tart could also be included in this category, though perhaps strictly only if it has a top layer of pastry, and not bottom. Incidentally, the likes of a clafoutis would be adjacent to this category, perhaps in an intersecting circle in the the Venn diagram I hope you are currently envisioning in your mind’s eye.
When I acquired a pound of apricots last week, I wanted to make a “fruit with a hat” dessert that I had never made before: hence this lovely cobbler. According to my research, a cobbler consists of a base layer of fruit, and a crumbly, buttery topping made of a batter/dough that is meant to resemble cobbles (like cobblestone). It seems that you either need a batter that is loose enough to dollop over the fruit in a haphazard yet charming way, or you can make a scone-esque dough, and cut out rounds to achieve the same effect. Many recipes liken the topping to an American “biscuit” dough, though this is not a biscuit as we know it in Ireland/the UK/Europe. A biscuit in America is like a scone in Ireland: essentially round, flaky and buttery (the pastry classification confusion continues).
I decided to develop the recipe for this apricot cobbler the latter way, making what is essentially a soft scone dough, and cutting little rounds which can be arranged on top of the fruit.
If stone fruit aren’t in season where you are, this would work nicely with tinned apricots or peaches, or you could use other seasonal or frozen fruits (apple and blackberry would be lovely, or I made a cherry one recently which was also delicious - see note below).
recipe: apricot cobbler
Ingredients
450g apricots
90g light brown sugar
Pinch cinnamon
Pinch nutmeg
Juice of 1 lemon
8g cornflour
120g flour
60g butter
½ tsp baking powder
Pinch cinnamon
50g caster sugar
Pinch salt
Zest of 1 lemon
55g buttermilk
1 egg, to egg wash
Demerara sugar
Flaked almonds
Method
Preheat the oven to 190C. Find a baking dish that will fit your fruit - mine was about 8” diameter.
First, prepare the fruit.
Cut the apricots in half, remove the stone, and cut into quarters or eighths. Toss in a bowl with the sugar, spices, lemon juice and cornflour, and leave to one side to macerate.
Place the flour, butter, baking powder, cinnamon, sugar, salt and lemon zest in a bowl, and use your fingertips to rub the butter into the dry ingredients. Add the buttermilk, and use your hand to bring together into a soft dough.
Tip out onto the worktop, and pat gently into a round shape slightly bigger than your baking vessel (it should be about 1cm thick). Use a 3-4cm cutter to cut out rounds, then roll out the remaining dough and repeat.
Tip the fruit into the baking dish, and top with the little dough discs. Egg wash, and sprinkle with Demerara sugar and flaked almonds.
Bake for 25-35 minutes, until the fruit is bubbling and the top is golden brown and crisp.
Note
For an alternative cherry cobbler, replace the apricot filling with the following:
700kg cherries (approx 500g once pitted)
75g caster sugar
6g cornflour
Juice 1 lemon
Love it Boo!