Super Easy Apple Cobbler Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between apple cobbler and apple crumble? ›

Cobbler: A fruit dessert made with a top crust of pie dough or biscuit dough but no bottom crust. Crisp/crumble: In Alberta, the terms are mostly interchangeable. Both refer to fruit desserts similar to cobbler but made with a brown sugar streusel topping sometimes containing old-fashioned rolled oats.

Cobbler is sometimes described as a kind of fruit pie, but strictly speaking, the two are different. Pies are made from pastry, rather than biscuit batter, and they are fully encased, with a crust at the top and the bottom, while cobblers typically only have a topping.

If your Peach Cobbler is mushy, it means either 1) your peaches were too ripe and broke down too much when baking (this can also produce a mushy topping), or 2) the Peach Cobbler was overbaked. Take care to use firm but ripe peaches and bake the cobbler until the topping reaches 200 degrees F.

The biggest difference between a cobbler and a pie is the placement of the dough. Pies have, at a minimum, a bottom crust with the fruit placed on top, while a cobbler has the fruit on the bottom and a dolloped dough on top instead.

Betty. Whereas crisps and cobblers are made up of a layer of fruit with either a streusel or pastry topping, with apple betty and its variations, we start constructing desserts made of alternating layers of fruit and pastry—or in this case crumbs.

The main reason your crumble topping isn't crunchy is probably because you haven't used Demerara sugar. Although, it could also be that you've got your topping ingredient quantities wrong: either too much or not enough flour and butter alongside the sugar.

A probe thermometer inserted in the center of the cobbler should reach 200°F in the thickest part of the topping. The filling should be bubbly around the sides, and the tops of the biscuits should be more deep amber than golden.

The method for the topping goes like this: Combine equal parts flour and sugar, and add enough melted butter to make a dough. This makes a very sweet cobbler with a topping somewhere between a sugar cookie and pie crust. Let me repeat that: a topping that is equal parts cookie and pie crust.

The biggest difference is that a cobbler is so easy to make (easier than pie!). While a pie is made with a bottom crust and often a top crust, the dough and the fruit filling cook together in a cobbler.

If you use enough batter to completely cover the fruit, you'll end up with a cobbler that's far too bready, more like an upside-down cake.

Why do you put cornstarch in a cobbler? ›

Making the Fruit Filling

You can bake a cobbler with just fruit as the filling, but a little sugar and cornstarch tossed with the fruit before baking will work together to create a lush sauce from the fruit's juices. This is the thing that turns a good cobbler into a knock-out dessert.

Water and flour can be combined to make a thickening agent for peach cobbler. This mixture is commonly known as a "flour slurry."

Cobbler has been around in America the longest of the three desserts; the Oxford Companion to Food dates its inception back to the 1850s. By the mid-19th century, it had become the dish we know now: fruit baked in the oven with some form of dough.

A brown betty is both layered and topped with sweet butter crumbs. The crumbs should be dry to absorb between the layers while remaining crunchy on top. Breadcrumbs or graham-cracker crumbs are used in this dessert. A buckle is generally made with berries folded in cake batter before baking with some crumb topping.

A tart is small pie filled with fruit or custard, with no top crust, like the cherry tarts you bought at the bakery.

Cobbler is usually topped with batter or biscuits in lieu of crust. Cobbler's name comes from its sometimes cobbled texture, which is a result of spooning or dropping the topping over the fruit rather than distributing it equally. This way, the filling can peek through.

Apple crisp is a dessert made with a streusel topping. In the US, it is also called apple crumble, a word which refers to a different dessert in the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Both are very similar apple desserts, but the difference mainly comes down to the crumble topping: Instead of the flour and oat mixture used in an apple crisp, an apple brown betty uses breadcrumbs for its crumbly, delicious topping.

Though crumbles, crisps, and cobblers are more akin to pie, a buckle is a lot like cake. In fact, they look nearly identical to fruit-filled coffee cakes. As the batter rises in the oven, the weight of the fruit causes it to “buckle.”