The best Blackberry Peach Cobbler I have ever eaten came out of a cast iron the size of a truck tire, at half past ten at night, in a restaurant that had already flipped its sign to closed. Her name was Miss Loretta and she still had her apron on, dusted with flour at the hip pocket where she kept wiping her hands. Macon, Georgia. Late July. My car was parked crooked out front.
I had been the last customer that night. I asked her, on the way to the door, how she got the biscuit topping to look the way it did. She told me to come back tomorrow at four in the afternoon, before the dinner rush, and she would show me. I did.
After Closing at Loretta’s Place in Macon
Her kitchen was smaller than I expected. Two burners, one oven, a wooden work table so worn it had a soft dip in the middle from years of the same hands rolling out the same biscuits. She wore Crocs. I want to be clear about the Crocs because people always romanticize these kitchens into linen aprons and copper pots and it was not that at all.
She peeled the peaches with a paring knife, not a peeler. She said a peeler took too much fruit with the skin. She was correct. She let me try and I peeled one badly, and she took it back and finished it herself without a word.
The blackberries came in a plastic clamshell from a supplier, not from some picturesque bramble. She said the wild ones were better if you had time to go pick them, and she used to, but the restaurant took that time now. This is the part of Georgia peach country that never makes it into the food magazines. It is people running a kitchen on a weeknight.
What Makes a Blackberry Peach Cobbler, and What Does Not
Loretta corrected me twice while we worked. First when I called the topping a crust. It is not a crust, she said, it is dropped biscuit dough. A cobbler is not a pie. There is no bottom. The word cobbler refers to the cobblestoned look of the dough, all uneven and craggy, letting the fruit bubble through in the gaps.
Second when I asked about oats. She looked at me like I had asked her to put ketchup in it. Oats belong in a crisp. Streusel with no oats belongs in a crumble. Biscuit dough belongs on a Blackberry Peach Cobbler. Those are three different desserts and Southerners do not mix them up.
I looked it up later. The first published cobbler recipe was in a book called The Kentucky Housewife in 1839, written by Lettice Bryan. British colonists could not do their suet puddings over open hearths, so they improvised with biscuit dough dropped over stewed fruit in a Dutch oven. A later formative version showed up in 1881 in a cookbook by Abby Fisher, a formerly enslaved cook whose recipes helped shape what we now think of as Southern soul food. The Georgia Peach Council leaned so hard on peach cobbler in the mid twentieth century that they lobbied for a national holiday for it. April 13. National Peach Cobbler Day.
Loretta did not tell me any of that. She did tell me her grandmother made it in a cast iron over coals in the yard, which lines up with the whole hearth cooking origin story pretty neatly.
What I Changed for the LA Kitchen
I flew home a week later with the recipe scribbled on the back of a receipt and made it wrong the first time. The peaches I got at the Hollywood farmers market were beautiful but underripe, and the whole cobbler tasted like sweetened cardboard. That one was on me.
Second attempt I let the peaches sit on the counter for four days until they smelled like summer through the paper bag. That fixed it. If your peaches are not fragrant across the room, they are not ready.
I also swapped in a smaller cast iron because Loretta’s was heirloom sized and mine is a plain ten inch Lodge, still seasoned from the last batch of cornbread. And I use a lot more cornstarch than she did, because the peaches out here run juicier than the ones she works with. I want a glossy filling, not soup. Three tablespoons is the sweet spot.
One more change. Loretta finished hers with a sprinkle of coarse sugar for crackle. I did too, until I ran out one Saturday and used regular granulated. Honestly, I could not tell the difference. So I just use what is in the jar now.
What I Used
- 2.5 pounds of fresh ripe peaches, peeled and sliced half an inch thick
- 2 cups of fresh blackberries
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar for the fruit, plus 1/4 cup and 2 tablespoons for the topping
- 3 tablespoons cornstarch, because the market peaches out here run juicy
- 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Half a teaspoon of cinnamon and a quarter teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg
- 1.5 cups of all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- Half a teaspoon of fine salt
- 6 tablespoons of very cold unsalted butter, cubed
- 3/4 cup of cold buttermilk, well shaken
Getting the Cobblestone Top Right
The biscuit dough is the whole game. Cold butter, cold buttermilk, and a fork you trust. Not a mixer. Not a food processor. Loretta cut hers with two forks, which felt fussy at first and then, halfway through, felt exactly right. You want the butter still visible in pea sized pieces so it steams when it hits the oven and leaves those little tender pockets inside.
Do not smooth the dough over the fruit. That was Loretta’s third correction. Drop it in rough tablespoon sized lumps and leave gaps. The gaps are the whole point. That is where the fruit bubbles up and turns thick and glossy at the surface, half syrup and half jam.
Bake at 375. Foil lined sheet underneath to catch drips, because it will drip. And then, and this is the hardest part, let it sit for twenty minutes before you spoon into it. The juices thicken as it cools. If you go in too early you will regret it.
I usually make this on a Sunday afternoon with the kitchen window cracked and something quiet playing. Nick Drake, most weekends. The smell fills the apartment. My neighbour texted me once to ask what I was baking. I invited her over. Now she comes by whenever she smells cinnamon.
Miss Loretta was right about most of it. I have made this cobbler twenty times now and every version has been better than the one before, but none has quite matched hers. That is fine. Some dishes are supposed to belong to the place they came from.
Blackberry Peach Cobbler
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Preheat the oven to 375 F and set a rack in the center position. Lightly butter a 10 inch cast-iron skillet or a 9x13 inch baking dish.
- Peel the peaches with a paring knife, remove the pits, and slice them 1/2 inch thick. Transfer to a large mixing bowl and add the blackberries.
- Sprinkle the 3/4 cup granulated sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, and nutmeg over the fruit. Add the lemon juice and vanilla extract, then gently toss with a spatula until every piece is coated and no dry cornstarch remains.
- Pour the fruit and all its juices into the prepared skillet, spreading it into an even layer. Let it sit while you make the topping so the sugar starts drawing out the juices.
- In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the 1.5 cups flour, 1/4 cup sugar, baking powder, and salt.
- Scatter the cold cubed butter over the flour mixture. Using a pastry cutter or two forks, cut the butter into the flour until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs with a few pea-sized pieces of butter still visible.
- Pour the cold buttermilk into the bowl and stir with a fork just until a shaggy, sticky dough forms. Do not overmix; a few dry streaks are fine.
- Drop the dough over the fruit in rough tablespoon-sized mounds, leaving small gaps between them so the fruit can bubble through. Do not smooth it into a solid layer — the uneven surface is what gives cobbler its cobblestone look.
- Sprinkle the reserved 2 tablespoons of sugar evenly over the biscuit tops for a crackly crust.
- Place the skillet on a foil-lined baking sheet to catch any drips, then bake for 45 to 55 minutes, until the biscuits are deep golden brown and the fruit juices are bubbling thickly at the edges.
- If the tops brown before the center biscuits are cooked through, tent loosely with foil for the last 10 minutes.
- Remove the cobbler from the oven and let it rest for at least 20 minutes on a wire rack. The juices will thicken as it cools, transforming from a bubbling syrup into a glossy, spoonable filling.
- Spoon the warm cobbler into bowls, making sure to scoop from the bottom to get plenty of fruit and juice with each serving of biscuit.