Summer Blackberry Cobbler with Vanilla-Rum Creme Anglaise--Posted by Joy

Taken from Cuisine at Home

Summer Blackberry Cobbler 
with coconut-pecan topping


Toss Together:
8 C blackberries fresh or frozen (thawed slightly if frozen)
1 C sugar (to taste, in my opinion--much more sugar if using wild blackberries from my experience)
1/4 C instant tapioca
Juice of 1/2 lime
Pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 375; toss berries with sugar, tapioca, lime juice and salt. Spoon into a 2qt baking dish.

Combine; Knead In:
1 C all-purpose flour
1 C sweetened shredded coconut
3/4 C sugar
1/2 C pecans; coarsely chopped
1/2 t. baking power
1/4 t. table salt
1/2 C cold unsalted butter, cubed (1 stick)

Combine flour, coconut, sugar, pecans, b. powder and salt; with fingertips knead in butter until blended; mixture should look like coarse sand.

Blend In; Top Berries With:
1 egg

Blend egg with berries; top berries with topping in clumps. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until topping is golden and crisp and filling is thick and bubbly. Cool on rack for at least 1 hour before serving.

Serve With: 
Vanilla-Rum Creme Anglaise

Vanilla-Rum Creme Anglaise


Warm: 
2 C half and half
2 T. sugar
1 vanilla bean, split and scraped; pod chopped into 1' pieces

Warm in saucepan over medium heat until steaming; about 5 minutes.

Whisk Together; Temper Milk Into and Cook:
5 egg yolks
3 T. sugar
2 T. light or dark rum
1/4 t. kosher salt

Whisk yolks, sugar, rum and salt together in a bowl; when milk mixture is steaming, temper into the eggs whisking constantly. Pour the custard back into the pan and return to burner. Cook over med-low heat, stirring constantly, until custard coats the back of a spoon, 5-8 minutes.

Blend and Strain; Add:
1 t. vanilla extract

Blend custard and vanilla bean pod in a blender for 1 minute. Strain into a bowl, add the extract, cover and chill.

MY NOTES: This recipe felt like a lot of work at the time, though reading it now I'm not sure why other than the tediousness of watching the anglaise carefully. I also picked my own blackberries and they were quite tart so it really needed at least double the amount of sugar the recipe called for. It was late in the season and the blackberries had large seeds in them as well so I didn't enjoy that so much. I had made a much simpler blackberry cobbler some years before that I loved. If I can ever find that recipe I'll post it as well. The Creme Anglaise was AWESOME. I made it a few times for other things--it was just as good with extract and not the hassle of the vanilla beans, but of course the bean made it very rich and pretty to look at as well. The topping was good--I would probably tweak it with a bit more sugar or...something. Not sure what. But worth playing around with if you have the motivation and time :-)