THE WORLD'S BEST COBBLER COOK

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TO MY MOTHER
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My Mother was undoubtedly the best cobbler-maker the world has ever known! Everyone said so. Blackberry, blueberry, cherry, apple, and peach---they were all AWESOME.

Most cobbler cooks will have to shift gears to wrap their minds around her concept of what a cobbler was. The big difference in my mother's WORLD CLASS COBBLER was:  it was not dry. It was full of rich, luscious, buttery, thick, berry-filled juice---with a lot of ice-berg-like chewy dumplings floating in it, all hidden under that golden brown, butter-swathed crust. The dumplings were done too.

Besides the rare and unusual filling came her next secret: THE DOUGH! This miraculous dough was actually an adaptation of her famous old-time farm homemade biscuit dough. This dough recipe was used both for the dumplings and the top crust. The top crust was thick!

The juice: how she made it, I don't know, and don't have the recipe at hand. She had a lot of this in her head I think. If using canned berries, she may have used two cans. The thickening may have been corn starch. When it came to the apple cobbler and the cherry cobbler, she had to have had a method for making the sugary, syrupy juice, for these fruits were grown on trees in the backyard every year, and didn't come out of cans.

There is an old saying which comes to us from the French, which goes: "The English have a thousand religions...but only one sauce." My Mother, being a West Texas farm girl, in a way had only one sauce---and it was BUTTER. (Remember Paula Deen!) The berry juice in the cobbler was floating with butter, as noted above.

Mother didn't care about all kinds of new and modern pans. She used the same beat-up aluminum cobbler pan for 61 years. (I Inherited it!) After all, in the hands of a Master Cook---that pan was enough!

From time to time, you'll find a restaurant that is known for its cobblers. Occasionally, you will find one that's pretty good. But not like Mother's! After eating hers, they are all dry and crusty. No dumplings, either.

Do we have her cobbler recipe? Yes!  Does ours taste like hers? No!

My Mother was definitely one of HEAVEN'S COOKS, lent to Earth for a time!

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BY MIL