461. How to make Skillet Cobbler -- to taste like Dutch Oven Cooking! From Meridian Magazine.

This is a change of pace!  Sounds like great ideas for dessert!  A cobbler made in a skillet, and baked in the oven.  A lot like dutch oven cooking.  Have fun and try it.  I think I will!  From Meridian Magazine.

How to Make Skillet Cobblers

By Dennis Weaver · July 7, 2015

I love cobblers with their crusty tops and sweetened fruit. My “go to” cobbler recipe for years has been our “Mormon Peach Cobbler” recipe.  Fifteen, maybe twenty years ago—actually now, it’s more like thirty years ago–we found an old Mormon pioneer cookbook at a little store in Yellowstone Park.  It had a recipe for peach cobbler that we liked.  We’ve tweaked it over the years and it still makes a very good cobbler.  That recipe is the basis for our skillet cobbler mix, one of our bestselling mixes.   

How to Make Skillet Cobblers

Skillet cobblers are made with a sweet cake over a filling.  There’s more cake to fruit than with most cobblers.  We usually top ours with whipped cream, a flavored whipped. Caramel whipped cream is our usual fare but on say, a blueberry lemon cobbler (pictured here), we are likely to use a lemon cloud whipped cream. You’ll see in many of our images, we have drizzled a dessert sauce over each serving. Combinations of fruit and toppings create an array of possibilities for you to try.

In addition to fruit and a cobbler mix or the recipe, you will want to consider:

• Fillings to use in place of or with your fruit. The cobbler in the top image was made with Chubby Cherry Filling. In a blueberry lemon cobbler, a lemon filling complements the blueberries perfectly.
• Flavors to make flavored whipped cream. For caramel whipped cream, substitute brown sugar for the granulated andcaramel flavor for the vanilla.

• Dessert sauces. We keep an array of dessert sauces handy, from chocolate to raspberry to lemon, to drizzle over our desserts.

The cake starts out in hot butter which seems to give it a crisp, buttery crust.  Use fresh or frozen fruit for the filling but to sweeten the fruit, you can add jam or pastry filling.  Then we’ve added flavored whipped cream, from caramel nut whipped cream to lemon cloud whipped cream.  The combination of crusty cake, sweet flavored fruit filling, and flavored whipped cream is outstanding.

I suspect that I need to give some Dutch oven baker credit for skillet cobblers.  They seem like Dutch oven fare.  I can picture some camper in the mountains pouring batter in a hot Dutch oven, adding fruit, and then stacking coals on his Dutch oven to bake his cobbler.  That’s essentially what we do in the kitchen but we use a skillet or frying pan and heat the pan on the stovetop.  Then we add the batter, fruit, and bake it in the oven.  Here’s how.

Choose an ovenproof skillet or frying pan.  We have included recipes for 9-inch and 12-inch pans.  We used a 10-inch pan for most of the 9-inch recipes and it worked just fine.

Add butter to the pan and heat the pan until the pan is hot and the butter is sizzling but not scorched.

Remove the pan from the heat and add the batter.  It’s a one-step, one-bowl batter made with six ingredients.

Layer prepared fruit over the batter.  You can use a combination of fruits like raspberries and peaches.  Add a sweetener—anything from jam, to lemon curd, to cream cheese pastry filling.

Bake it in the oven.

The fruit sinks to the bottom and the batter tries to come up and fold over the top though it never quite reaches the center.  Serve it warm with flavored whipped cream.  (We provide the recipes.)  It’s not the same but you can use ice cream.

The Project

We started out with a peach and pineapple skillet cobbler.  Then we baked variations for days.  When our imaginations ran dry and we started to run out of fresh fruit and jam combinations to try, we started adding pastry fillings.  That yielded a to-die-for Mango Coconut Cream Skillet Cobbler with Coconut Whipped Cream.  Later, to spiff up a pear cobbler, we layered walnuts and caramel ice cream topping over the pears.  (You need to add that recipe to your bucket list.)  We trotted these and other cobblers down the stairs from our test kitchen to our country store to feed customers and get their opinions.  It wasn’t just staff that found these cobblers incredibly good.

What You’ll Need

If you have an ovenproof skillet or frying pan, you won’t need much else for some of these recipes.  We used a 12-inch all-purpose clad stainless steel pan for the larger recipes and a 10-inch clad stainless steel pan for the smaller.

You can experiment with any jams or jellies and we have large selection of gourmet jams at reasonable prices.  Some of the recipes below call for peach pineapple jelly or red currant jelly.

If you are going to make the flavored whipped creams—which we highly recommend—you will a need a selection of flavors.  The recipes below call for butterscotch, caramel, brown sugar, and lemon flavors.  We sell all these and many more.  Most flavored whipped creams call for brown sugar instead of granulated sugar and an appropriate flavor.

We sell professional pastry fillings in Bavarian cream, cream cheese, and lemon plus fruit pastry fillings.  Your pastry fillings are inexpensive—two pounds goes a long ways—and open an extra horizon of possibilities to explore.

Peach Pineapple Paradise Skillet Cobbler with Caramel Whipped Cream

Once the fruit is prepared, this is a simple one-bowl, one-pan recipe that goes together quickly.

You can make this cobbler either from scratch or using our mix.

While these are called skillet cobblers, the butter is melted in a pan on the stovetop, the batter is added, and then the cobbler transferred to the oven to bake.  Any oven-proof, 10-inch pan will work.   You can also use a two quart baking dish and melt the butter in the oven.

For the cake: Use The Prepared Pantry Skillet Cobbler Base Mix or the recipe below.

1 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the filling

2 tablespoons butter
1 3/4 to 2 cups fresh peaches, peeled and sliced into thick slices
1/3 cup pineapple tidbits, drained
1/4 cup Peach Pineapple Paradise Jelly or similar jelly

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

1. Add the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt to the bowl of your stand-type mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.  Turn the mixer on for less than a minute to mix the ingredients together.
2. Add the eggs, milk, sour cream, and vanilla.  Turn the mixer on again to mix the ingredients stopping to scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula.  When thoroughly mixed, set aside.
3. Place the butter in the pan over medium heat and melt the butter until it is hot but not scorched.  Turn the heat off.
4. Immediately scrape the batter into the hot pan.  Place the peach slices on top of the batter.  Place the pineapple pieces on top of the peaches.  Dab the jelly in small spoonfuls around the peaches somewhat evenly placed.
5. Bake for approximately 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the pan comes out fairly clean, with some crumbs clinging.  The top should be a light, golden brown.

Note: Different pans may require different baking times. 

For the Caramel Whipped Cream

1 cup whipping cream
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon caramel flavor

Whip the cream with a whip attachment.  When peaks start to form, add the brown sugar and caramel flavor.  Continue beating until stiff peaks form.

Notes:  Whipped cream will melt as it sits, especially if not refrigerated.  Add two tablespoons meringue powder to retard melting.  Whipped cream can be whipped again to revive it.

Visit our website for more skillet cobbler recipes.

Author Biography

Dennis Weaver has burned food from Point Barrow, Alaska, to Miami, Florida. He is the founder of The Prepared Pantry in Rigby, Idaho and the author of “How to Bake: The Art and Science of Baking” available as an E-book or as a Kindle book on Amazon.

He loves to help people bake! Get a free copy of his 220 page book “How To Bake, The Art and Science of Baking” in a downloadable version.

Dennis lives in Rigby, Idaho, with his wife, Merri Ann. They have five wonderful children and five beautiful granddaughters.