Just finished a second bowl of peach cobbler and vanilla ice cream that I made for a family cookout this afternoon. I have a hard time showing up to chow down on other people's food without bringing something. I've got a double whammy combo of good old fashioned Irish Catholic guilt and Southern Tradition spurring me on to do more and to make it look perfect.
The lure of summer in Georgia was too much to overlook so I decided on an easy to impress peach cobbler. I am certainly not above going by the recipe, so I headed straight to my favorite recipe site. I was pretty surprised at how complicated folks wanted to make a peach cobbler. Leave it to my friend Paula to leave it simple enough to bake even after sipping on mint juleps on the side porch all afternoon. After a late brunch we wandered over to the grocery store for ingredients and I found a huge stack of local peaches from Lane Southern Orchards in Fort Valley, GA.
The cobbler was super easy to make, very simple ingredients and a very simple process. It is important to note that the only complication with this recipe is the type of flour you use. You must use self-rising flour or you'll get a goopy, flat mess. I wasn't sure what I had in my pantry so I added a tsp of baking powder for safety's sake. If you're not sure adding baking powder will only make your dough a bit more fluffy. Fluffy = good, so no loss there. With the rising flour keeping down the amount of stirring/mixing is super important to make it all fluff together the right way.
Overall the cobbler worked out very well. The dough was a little much - maybe I had self-rising flour after all! I think next time I would either cut down on the amount of dough or increase the amount of fruit. This said, I still ate two bowls of the stuff, so it wasn't that much of an issue. I'm glad to have put some local, seasonal fruit to use the way god intended (i.e. mixed together with sugar and butter).
