Warming the Kitchen

When we first moved up here to Minnesota, we lived in a nearly twenty year old (circa 1959) house trailer that had no insulation.  Okay, it must have had some insulation, but it couldn't have been much.  We had frost climbing up the inside walls most of the winter.

I made it a habit in the winter time to make breakfasts that were baked in our wood cookstove oven so that at least the kitchen was a halfway comfortable area in which to be.

One dish that I made quite a bit was Fruit Cobbler.  Most of the time I used apples, but the recipe is adaptable to using other fruits.

Last night while I was dangling upside down in our big freezer looking for some bread, I noticed the bags of raspberries, strawberries and blueberries harvested from our garden this past summer.  Dang, I haven't been using them as much as I should so decided to make Fruit Cobbler for breakfast this morning using some of our blueberries.

It's nothing spectacular to look at straight out of the oven . . . 

. . . but, oh my, did it taste good.  Our blueberries this year have a particularly "wine-y" flavor that is outstandingly delicious.

You can see the two of us managed to make a respectable dent in the cobbler at breakfast.  A serving each after dinner tonight as dessert, then Chicken Mama snarfed the portion we had saved for her (this was while she was helping her dad with some computer diffoogulties he was having) and the empty pan is now soaking in the sink.

Want a look at the recipe?  Here it is.

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Fruit Cobbler

4 cups fruit (peaches, apples, berries)

3/4 cups sugar (+/- depending on your fruit)

1 teaspoon cinnamon (with apples)

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 cup sugar

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 beaten egg

1 cup milk

2 tablespoons melted butter

Place the fruit in a buttered baking dish (I used a 9" x 9") and sprinkle sugar (and any spices/seasonings you like) over fruit.  (For the blueberries this morning I used 1/2 cup sugar and a couple dashes of lemon juice.)

Sift together the flour, baking powder, 1/4 cup sugar and salt.

Blend the egg, milk and melted butter.  Add to the dry ingredients.  Beat to a smooth batter and pour over fruit.  (I sprinkled a sugar/cinnamon mix on top of the batter.)  Bake at 350° for 60 minutes.  Serve warm.  Or at room temp.  (If there's any left when it reaches room temperature.)

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I'm thankful that old house trailer is now long gone from our lives and that we live in a snug house with no trace of frost on the inside walls anymore.  Although our temperature first thing this morning was a couple of chilly degrees below zero, Papa Pea's good job of banking the wood stoves last night kept us very comfortable.  However, it didn't hurt a bit to have that little extra heat from the oven while the cobbler was baking this morning.