You may use a mixture of any berries available to you—except strawberries. Blackberries or boysenberries are nice for the bulk; a few raspberries or black raspberries add a delicious perfume. People who don’t ordinarily like dessert will often eat this.
For the dough:
Toss the berries with ⅓ cup sugar and 1 tablespoon flour. Use an extra ½ tablespoon of flour if the berries are very juicy.
Mix the dry ingredients for the dough:
Leave out the salt if you are using salted butter.
Cut in 6 tablespoons butter until the mixture looks like course cornmeal.
Add ¾ cup cream and mix lightly, until the dry ingredients are just moistened.
The dry ingredients can be prepared ahead of time—even several days ahead—and kept refrigerated. The cream is then added when you are ready to bake the cobbler.
Put the berry mixture into a 1½ quart baking dish. Make patties of the dough, 2 to 2½ inches in diameter and ½-inch thick. Arrange them over the top of the berries.
Bake in a preheated 375° oven for 35 to 40 minutes, or until the topping is brown and the berry juices bubble thickly around it.
Serve warm with cream to pour over.
Pear with Ginger and Mint
Use 6-8 pears, peeled, cored and cut into medium chunks.
Toss with juice and zest from one lemon and ¼ cup sugar.
Add 2 to 3 tablespoons fresh mint, chopped medium fine and 1 to 2 tablespoons ginger, chopped fine. The ginger compliments well but there’s no need to make a fetish of it.
Follow the steps above for the dough, assembly and baking.