Blackberry Corn Cobbler
Blackberries under a biscuit crust is a call you've run a hundred times. This one has a twist: the "cream" in the topping isn't cream at all. It's corn, grated raw off the cob, meat and milk together, straight into the dough. NYT's pitch is that late-summer corn can stand in for heavy cream and add some texture to the crust. That's a bold claim for a cobbler. Today I found out if it holds up under firehouse conditions or if it's just test-kitchen theory.
Recipe by Jerrelle Guy, NYT Cooking Blackberry Corn Cobbler
Fuel
Filling
2 pounds / 905 g fresh, ripe blackberries (about 6½ cups), lightly mashed with a potato masher
⅔ cup granulated sugar, plus more as needed
¼ cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
Topping
4 tablespoons / 60 g very cold unsalted butter (½ stick), cubed, plus more for greasing the pan
1¼ cups all-purpose flour
⅓ cup granulated sugar
⅓ cup / 50 g finely ground yellow cornmeal
1¼ teaspoons baking powder
¾ teaspoon kosher salt
2 large ears sweet yellow corn (about ¾ cup grated, with its milk)
Finish
2 tablespoons heavy cream
4 teaspoons turbinado sugar
Tools
9x9 square baking dish
Rimmed sheet pan
Box grater
Liquid measuring cup
Fine mesh sieve
Potato masher
Pastry brush
Tactics
Oven to 375. Grease the 9x9 with butter.
Toss the mashed blackberries with the filling sugar, flour, lemon juice, and salt. Taste and add more sugar if the berries need it. Spread in an even layer in the dish and set aside.
Grate the corn over a bowl with the box grater to catch the meat and the milk. Ditch the cobs or save them for stock. I chopped up the cobs and added them to the warmed cream for extra flavor. You want a solid ¾ cup; if you come up short, top it off with more corn, cream, or milk.
Sift, then whisk the flour, sugar, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt together. Add the cubed butter and toss to coat. Pinch the butter between your thumb and the side of your index finger until the pieces are about pea-sized.
Pour the grated corn over the flour mixture and work it together by hand until it forms a cohesive dough.
Crumble the dough over the berries. Brush the top generously with heavy cream and sprinkle with the turbinado sugar, the texture is very much needed. Ensure the dough has peaks and valleys; you want some random texture, otherwise it will bake very uniformly, allowing for fewer pockets of blackberry to fall in love with.
Set the dish on a sheet pan to catch any overflow and bake 35 to 40 minutes, until the crust is golden and the berries are bubbling and thick. Let it rest at least 10 minutes before serving.
MODIFICATIONS: Ran it as written, ingredient for ingredient, step for step, sans minor additions/techniques I added on the fly from personal experience (e.g., sift then whisk, doubled the salt, one of my baking tenets, and kept citrus zest in).
After the Fire Critiques
Big flavor for modest effort, and the corn-in-the-crust idea earns its spot on the run card. [Fold in your bolded additions here, with the why behind each.]
My one gripe is the grating. It works, but it's messy. Corn milk gets everywhere, and you're chasing kernels across the counter. Next time I'd stand the ear upright, slice the kernels off, then run the back of a chef's knife down the cob to press out the milk into the bowl: same result, a fraction of the cleanup. I'd also blitz a third to a half of the kernels with an immersion blender before adding them to the dough, to push more corn flavor into the biscuit. Leave the rest whole for texture.
Indulge.