Fiddlin' with the cobbler

For those of you who don't know me, I'm a control freak. I do need to do things MY way. This ends up being true with recipes. I change them to fit my quirks and idiosyncrasies all the time.

So one night, some of J's co-workers are coming over for dinner. They are bringing a fabulous salad and we'll be tossing some homemade pesto (that I made and froze) with some pasta. Salad and entrée done. I simply cannot have a dinner party (such that it is) without dessert.

I look for a cobbler recipe since they are fairly easy to assemble. Being the control freak I am, I don't want just any old cobbler, I want the cakey kind. There are two kinds of cobbler, the biscuit kind that has what is essentially a scone dough floating on top of the fruit, and the cakey kind where the cakelike batter oozes down into the fruit and marries it into a fruit cakey mess of goodness. I find the following recipe on Epicurious.

For filling
1 stick butter
1 teaspoon lemon juice
4 cups fresh blueberries, rinsed and drained
1 cup sugar

For topping
1 cup self-rising flour
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring
1/2 cup of milk
Accompaniment: Fresh whipped cream or vanilla ice cream

To prepare the filling:
Preheat oven to 375°F. Place the butter in an 8 x 8-inch square glass baking dish (no substitutes), and melt the butter in the microwave. In a mixing bowl, combine lemon juice and blueberries. Add the sugar and mix well. Add the blueberry mixture to the baking dish with the melted butter. Do not stir.

Make topping:
Combine all of the topping ingredients in a small bowl. Pour this mixture over the blueberries and bake 45 minutes, or until brown. This recipe is also good for apples, blackberries, and peaches.

A STICK of butter? A CUP of sugar in the fruit? The poor fruit will be doing the backstroke in a pool of sugary butter? I promptly cut the amount of butter and sugar in the fruit by half and cut the sugar in the topping by a third. Along with the lemon juice in the filling, I add a dash of REAL vanilla. I also add a half a teaspoon of cinnamon in the topping batter for added flavor.

I crossed my fingers about this because I changed the recipe fairly radically. It turned out wonderfully. Tasting a piece of the topping without the fruit, I actually thought I could have cut the amount of sugar in half, not just by a third. While it's not always advisable to play with recipes when it comes to baking, my control freak mind can't help but tinker with a recipe.