Take a trip to the dollar store and grab a stick of butter (when it goes on sale, grab a pound or two for the freezer). Dump it all in a baking dish; after 45 minutes in your oven, you’ve got cobbler.
Our custom is we eat dinner, head to the game store, then after 3 hours of questing head back to my place for dessert and packing up the leftovers. I make the cobbler before we leave for D&D, so the smell fills the house when we get back. All I need to do at the last minute is get out the whipped cream (here’s a plug for Cabot whipped cream in a can – the real stuff, sold at the best price at Trader Joe’s).
Other than a stick of butter (butter is $3.78/pound at Walmart), the other two ingredients can be grabbed anywhere, even at a drug store, though they are cheapest at a dollar store. You’ll need a full-size box of yellow cake mix and two small cans of sliced peaches – in syrup if you can get it (fruit juice won’t result in as gooey a cobbler). Use a rectangular baking pan measuring about 9 x 13– also available in a 2 pack at the dollar store – and sprinkle half of the cake mix in the bottom. Do NOT drain the peaches! Open both cans and dump them on top of the cake mix. Mix it up a bit. Sprinkle on the rest of the cake mix and stir again.
Melt the butter over the top (if you are careful, you can do this in the microwave, but since I’m preheating the oven to 350 anyway I put a glass measuring cup on a cookie sheet in the oven and watch it while the oven preheats – takes only a few minutes). Using mitts, grab the cup of melted butter and drizzle it on top of the cake mix as evenly as you can. If you want to add a bit of crunch, sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top (recipe for that follows plus an extra!).
Bake it for 45-50 minutes or until golden brown. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream. Congratulate yourself with a second helping. 8 servings for a cost of 50 cents each.
Cinnamon sugar: just like it sounds, it’s sugar with cinnamon mixed in. Maybe 5 parts sugar to 1 part cinnamon. Here’s the extra – cinnamon toast is a fast sweet and great with cold milk or hot coffee. Use a baking sheet in your toaster oven and toast top of the bread only (that’s why you put the bread on the baking sheet). Melt a little butter and brush on the untoasted side of the bread (or use whipped butter which is easy to spread when you soften it a little) – use just enough butter to thinly cover the bread and make the cinnamon sugar stick. Sprinkle on the cinnamon sugar to cover all the buttered bread. Toast a second cycle on the baking sheet, sugar side up – the cinnamon sugar will melt into a candy layer. This is easy comfort food for colds, flu and the occasional upset stomach. Or just because it tastes great.
Recent Comments