Taking on Cobbler, and Winning

Plus cruising through Abruzzo: the eating highs

This week’s recipe is a sweet dessert and an experiment with an American dish that fascinates me: cobbler. Subtly spiced tinned apricots under a 'biscuit' blanket. Further down I’m talking through the best six things we ate on our recent trip to Abruzzo, in Italy’s midlands, where we visited the factory of my favourite brand of pasta!

I am currently 6 months pregnant. One of the side effects of this is that I now linger in the dessert aisle, picking up then putting down various chocolate éclairs, apple pies and trifles. My body wants the sweet stuff, and more often than not that means a chocolate mousse (because they are 6 for 90p in all supermarkets I frequent, and because they are a throwback to my childhood). But sometimes that means a cooked pudding that I’ve craved, which is where today’s recipe for Apricot and Pistachio Cobbler comes in.

I’ve wanted to make a cobbler for a long time. You might remember I have somewhat of an aversion to scones (or biscuits as they are called in America). But I’ve always found the idea of them sitting on top of hot, cooked fruit appealing. Especially apricots, which are heaven when cooked, and therefore heaven when tinned.

In this recipe I’ve used a topping that’s partly made with wholemeal flour, inspired by Nia Burr of Ester’s excellent scone recipe which was on the newsletter last year. Its nuttiness does great things. I love the way the topping cooks and becomes dumpling-like while the apricots turn saucier and jammier underneath. I liked the process of kneading the pistachios into the batter/dough for the topping too.

When we ate ours, we served it with pistachio ice cream which worked a treat (this one is really great if you’re in the market), and another time with double cream, which was as mood-lifting as hot desserts with cream always are.