THE Peach Cobbler Recipe

When you bring that first flat of tree ripened peaches home, your mind is filled with possibilities. The taste and flavor of a real tree ripened peach is something that almost defies explanation and frankly anybody with any cooking experience quickly realizes what an incredible opportunity they have in their hands to create something that is absolutely remarkable. I’ve cooked a lot of things with these peaches and I can tell you that without a doubt my absolute favorite is peach cobbler.

2020 was a hard year for a lot of folks, but we also remember 2020 fondly as the first year we ever had peaches from all of the trees in the orchard. As I brought home my share of some of those first peaches I can tell you that my mind was absolutely swimming with rich gooey peach cobblers. Stepping into the kitchen I suddenly realized that I didn’t actually know any peach cobbler recipes. I turned to Google and pulled up the first recipe I could find that appeared to have good reviews. As it baked in the oven I watched eagerly through the glass as it started bubbling up peachy goodness and I could hardly wait for it to come out!

After it cooled I finally took that first bite and … ya’ll … I was disappointed.

– First cobbler recipe – Graham Slaughter

After it cooled I finally took that first bite and … ya’ll … I was disappointed. It wasn’t as fantastically great as I expected it to be. The crust was mediocre, the peaches didn’t shine, the spices were just … wrong. Fast forward 3 months. 25+ attempts at cobbler had come and gone. My wife and kids had eaten cobbler more times in the last weeks than they had over the entirety of the rest of their lives. Mistakes were made. Tweaks were made. Careful taste testing became more and more of a joy as the taste really started to come together. It took so long, but I finally had THE peach cobbler recipe. It never fails me no matter which variety of peaches I use and with a touch of Blue Bell it is absolutely ASTOUNDINGLY good.

Here are a lot of the things we learned.

• Remove the peach skins. Blanch, peal, paring knife them off – whatever. It takes more time but it really helps. Many folks don’t mind the texture of a peach skin but if you’re looking to absolutely knock it out of the park, remove the skins.
• Drain off ANY excess liquid. Peaches naturally have a lot of liquid in them and when you bake them that liquid gets released. A watery cobbler is kinda disappointing, so drain off the excess.
• Crust matters. Don’t use a store bought crust. Don’t. DON’T. I didn’t bake and eat a dozen different crusts just so you could live a mediocre cobbler life. If you don’t have a crust that consistently wows folks, use the crust recipe listed below.

The Crust Recipe

After failing so many times on this part of the recipe, I started to reach out to some experts. This is a recipe that I received from an older lady that knew how to make a truly fantastic crust. It has been tweaked slightly for the purpose of peach cobbler usage and it tastes SO good.

Ingredients for the crust for a 9×13 cobbler

• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 cup shortening
• 3/4 cup butter (1.5 sticks)
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup water

Mix together the dry ingredients (flour, salt, sugar) in a large bowl.

Add the vegetable shortening and the butter and cut it into the flour mixture using a pastry knife until you have pea sized bits.

In a separate small bowl, mix together the White Vinegar, Egg, and 1/2 Cup water. When mixed, pour that mixture into the bowl with the flour / vegetable shortening / butter mixture that you just made. Use a large fork to work the moisture into the flour to create the final crust. Once it is all mixed together and the moisture somewhat evenly distributed, you can turn the bowl out onto a lightly floured countertop so that you can use your hands to press it together into a ball.

Don’t over work the crust. You only want to work it just enough to get the moisture into all the flour mixture and to pull it together into a ball.

At this point the correct thing to do is to put it in the fridge to help make the crust a bit more flaky, but I prefer the ease of handling the crust when it is at room temperature. In my opinion a flaky crust isn’t as critical here as the flavor. You can try both ways and see what works best for you, but for me it’s room temperature.

The Peach Cobbler Recipe

Ingredients for the filling for a 9×13 cobbler

• 6-8 lbs of fresh tree ripened peaches. Skins removed. Cut into slices. The more the merrier as long as it fits!
• 1 cup of sugar
• 1.5 teaspoon nutmeg
• 5 tbsp butter melted
• 1/4 cup of water or peach drippings
• 1/4 cup corn starch (for thickening)

Extra Ingredients for Topping

• Cinnamon
• Sugar

Cut off about 3/4 of the crust you previously prepared and roll it out to cover the bottom of your 9×13 pan. You’ll need to roll it pretty thin for this to be enough crust. I’d guess around 3/16 inch thick. The leftover (1/4) crust wont be enough to make a full top layer of crust, but that’s ok! We wont be making a full top layer. This helps to allow moisture to escape which makes the cobbler less runny.

After draining any extra moisture off of the peach slices, put them into the bottom of your 9×13 that you just put the crust into. Don’t stress if the crust isn’t perfect here. This isn’t a pie. There isn’t a wet heavy filling that’s going to spill out of imperfections in the crust.

In a separate small bowl, mix together the corn starch and nutmeg with the water/peach drippings. The idea here is to dissolve the cornstarch into the water as much as possible.

In a second separate small bowl, mix the sugar with the melted butter.

Once you have mixed those 2 bowls separately, you can put them together into one large bowl and mix those together. Do NOT do this in a hot pan. You’ll cause the cornstarch to start clumping up and have a clumpy mess instead of an almost syrupy consistency.

Once all of that is mixed together, you’ll pour it over your peaches that are in the 9×13 pan / crust. No need to cover every peach, just distribute the syrupy mixture evenly throughout the pan.

Roll out the remaining 1/4 of the crust to create a top layer over the peaches. It won’t be large enough to cover the entire thing. That’s OK though because that will help the cobbler bake off more of the moisture. If you put a full crust covering over the top it tends to produce a more watery cobbler.

Dust the top of the cobbler with a generous amount of granulated sugar and cinnamon.

Place it onto the preheated oven at 350F and bake uncovered for 80 minutes. Don’t use the convection oven feature ofryou’ll burn the top crust.

Once it’s done cooking, remove it from the oven and let it cool for at least 30 minutes. This helps it to thicken up a bit more. You CAN eat it immediately, but it will be a bit runnier.

If you have a scoop of Vanilla Blue Bell Ice Cream, slap that baby into a bowl with your cobbler.

That’s it! I know it should go without saying, but fresh tree ripened peaches really will make the difference in flavor. Give this a try next time you get a flat of peaches from The Orchard and let us know how it turns out!

My favorite peach to make this with is the Loring, but Tiff’s favorite is the July Prince which makes for a beautiful red cobbler that looks almost like cherry cobbler!