Editor’s Note: All review content reflects the views of the individual author only and does not represent a stance taken by The Collegian or its editorial board.
I have a giant box of peaches in my fridge. A Costco-sized box of peaches.
Now I have to find a use for them before they go bad and there are dozens of peach recipes out there. So with summer — and peach season — coming to a close, I decided to try a bunch of peach recipes to find the best ones.
The recipe I attempted this week was Lauren Allen’s Peach Cobbler from Tastes Better from Scratch. Peach cobbler is a dessert with a crisp topping over baked fruit that is light in the center.
Right off the bat, the website is really nice. I’m a baker who uses my phone rather than a laptop to reference a recipe, and the formatting worked really well. Also, advertisements didn’t get in the way while reading the text. They do have a “jump to recipe” button, but this is thankfully not one of those recipes where the author gives you their whole life story.
They have step-by-step, detailed instructions with photos and few handy tips, like the best way to peel peaches. The recipe itself is easy to read and has options for metric measurements along with conversions for half or double batches.
The actual process was very easy. The most time-consuming step was, without a doubt, preparing the peach. Since I used fresh peaches for this recipe, peeling and cutting the recommended four cups took a while. The recipe called for five peaches, but I used seven to cover the surface area of my pan. The other half of peach prep was to cook the peaches down, which didn’t take too long, but it does require you to pay extra attention so it doesn’t get too thick.
The batter itself was easy to make and only required a few pantry staples: flour, sugar, butter, milk, baking powder and cinnamon. For my taste, the batter was a little thin. Cobbler batter is much thinner than most other baked goods — it resembles pancake batter more than anything else — but this was too thin. It was closer to crêpe batter than pancake batter.
Baking took a little longer than the 40 minutes put forth by the recipe, but that’s probably due to the variations between ovens and elevations. The edges got crispy, but the center was a little soft. Part of this issue likely came from step five, where the instructions are to spoon the peaches and juice over the batter.
Typically, when you pre-cook your fruit, it’s to help get some of that moisture out so the rest of your bake doesn’t get soggy. The best example of this is with an apple pie: The apples have to be cooked in advance so the pie crust doesn’t get soggy. You just use the apples, not the juice. By including the juice of the peaches, there was just too much liquid for the batter to get crispy along the top.
Despite my issues with the texture of the topping, I think this was a fantastic peach cobbler. My roommate and I ate most of it in one day. I give it a solid thumbs up and recommend it, though with a few tweaks.
Reach Audrey Weishaar at life@collegian.com or on social media @RMCollegian.
