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By Sarah Condley

Columnist

I thought my son and his family were coming to celebrate his birthday a week early, so I purchased strawberries and blueberries at the grocery last Friday in anticipation of making his favorite dessert, Berries and Stars from The Pampered Chef. Later that evening, I spoke to Daniel and realized I’d misunderstood, and he wasn’t coming to celebrate until his actual birthday, which was the following weekend.

On Sunday afternoon, since I had all that fruit on hand, I decided to bake a dessert for Brad and myself. I looked through some of the recipes I’ve collected over the years, and because I didn’t have all of the ingredients called for in the ones that appealed to me, I went to the computer and searched for whole wheat cobblers because of that darn allergy Brad has. I found what sounded like the perfect recipe at pepperdelight.com.

The cobbler recipe sounded easy and all ingredients were in the pantry and refrigerator. The picture accompanying the recipe looked like the cobblers you see that appear to have biscuits on top. The recipe didn’t tell me what size dish to use, so after some thought, I decided on an 11 x 7 size, hoping it would be big enough.

After turning the oven to preheat, I greased the baking dish with butter and set it aside.

I initially thought I’d make a blueberry cobbler, but I didn’t have enough to make three cups, so I added some sliced strawberries. Once the berries were in a bowl, I gently stirred the lemon juice over them.

I moved on to making the batter and combined the whole wheat flour, sugars, and optional nutmeg, but I like the flavor, so of course, I used it as well as oats, baking powder and salt. After whisking the dry ingredients together, I poured in the skim milk and stirred it. The batter was not thick as I expected it to be. I expected it to be like biscuit dough. The batter was runny like cake batter, and I reread the recipe to make sure I’d done everything right, which I had.

I poured the berries into the buttered baking dish, and since the batter wasn’t thick enough to spoon over the berries, I just poured it all over them and hoped this recipe would turn out.

I skipped the part about sprinkling the top with powdered sugar, mainly because I was so concerned about the runny batter that I didn’t see that step in the recipe.

I put the baking dish in the oven and set the timer for 20 minutes. At the 20-minute mark, the cobbler was pretty brown due to the whole wheat flour, and I took it out of the oven.

It was a bit early for supper when the cobbler was done, so it sat on the counter and cooled off until later.

After our evening meal, we did dig into the cobbler. I heated my serving in the microwave, but Brad ate his at room temperature. We both topped ours off with vanilla ice cream.

I’ll have to say I wasn’t expecting this cobbler to be delicious since it is made with whole wheat flour, and some of the dishes we’ve tried with entire wheat haven’t been that great, but to my surprise, this was good. Brad said he couldn’t distinguish between this and a “regular” cobbler.

Despite the runny batter, this cobbler was a hit, and I Nailed It! This is one whole wheat recipe that is going to make it into my self-made cookbook.

Whole Wheat Berry Cobbler

Ingredients

• 3 cups mixed berries

• 1/2 cup granulated sugar

• 1/2 cup brown sugar

• 3 Tablespoons unsalted butter (melted)

• 1 cup whole wheat flour

• 1 cup milk

• 2 Tablespoons lemon juice

• 1 Tablespoon baking powder

• 1/2 cup quick cooking oats

• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg (optional)

• Pinch of salt

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

• Apply some butter on the baking pan and keep aside.

• Combine berries with lemon juice and set aside.

• In a bowl, mix together whole wheat flour, sugar, brown sugar, nutmeg oats, baking powder and salt.  Whisk it by adding melted butter until crumbly.  Add milk and stir it to aerate the batter.

• Spread the berry mixture in the pan.

• Using a large spoon, drop the batter on top of the berries.

• Sprinkle powdered sugar on top.

• Bake for about 20-25 minutes until the crust becomes golden brown.  Allow it to rest for 5 minutes.

• Serve with vanilla ice cream.