Bake
Deep-Dish Berry Cobbler Pie
- Prep time 1 hour
- Cook time 1 hour
- makes 1 (9-inch) deep dish pie
Author Notes
It’s summer, you’ve got a bushel of fresh berries from the farmers' market or your favorite roadside stand—how do you decide which delicious way to celebrate them in dessert form? There’s cobbler; loads of sweet, juicy fruit underneath tender biscuit topping. But there’s also pie; that same gorgeous fruit wrapped in a flaky, buttery pastry crust. Perhaps it is being the maximalist by nature host of Bake it Up a Notch that caused me to wonder: Why choose just one, when you can have both?
The beauty of cobbler is that it’s juicy, so you don’t have to worry about the slice-ability element that comes into play with pie. With this pie, I truly blend the concepts of both—it’s notably juicier than my typical fruit pies, but also firmer than most cobblers. The biscuit on top is a fluffy drop-biscuit style which is super simple to make, especially in this small-batch form, which produces only enough biscuit to top the surface of the pie. You can scoop it onto the top however you wish, leaving space for berries to bubble through, or covering the majority of the fruit (just aim to keep it in a fairly even layer so it bakes evenly, too).
I love the combinations of textures in this pie. Crisp outer crust, just-sweet-enough fruity interior, and the biscuit itself which has multiple different textures: Crisp on top, fluffy inside, and jam-slicked where it touches the filling. You can serve this with ice cream, whipped cream, or my personal favorite…a drizzle of plain, cold heavy cream, which swirls with the syrupy juices and into every bite. —Erin Jeanne McDowell
Test Kitchen Notes
For this recipe, we love using Erin's All Buttah Pie Dough as the pie base. —Food52
Ingredients
- For the pie & filling:
-
1
batch of your favorite pie dough, prepared and well-chilled
-
6 heaping cups
(1010 grams) berries, trimmed and halved (or quartered, if large)
-
1 tablespoon
(15 grams) freshly squeezed lemon juice
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1/3 cup
(66 grams) granulated sugar
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1/3 cup
(71 grams) light brown sugar
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1/3 cup
(40 grams) all-purpose flour
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3/4 teaspoon
(2 grams) ground cinnamon
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1/2 teaspoon
(2 grams) fine sea salt
-
1
vanilla bean, halved and scraped, 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste, or 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- For the drop biscuit topping & assembling the pie:
-
1 cup
(120 grams) all-purpose flour
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1/4 cup
(53 grams) light brown sugar, packed
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3/4 teaspoon
(3 grams) baking powder
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1/4 teaspoon
(1 gram) baking soda
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1/2 teaspoon
(2 grams) fine sea salt
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4 tablespoons
(57 grams / 2 ounces) cold unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch / 1-cm cubes
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1/2 cup
(120 grams) buttermilk
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1/2 teaspoon
(3 grams) vanilla extract
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Turbinado or coarse sugar, for sprinkling
Directions
- For the pie & filling:
- Make room in your refrigerator for your deep-dish pie pan.
- On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough into a round ¼-inch thick. Use scissors to trim away any excess dough to leave just a ½ inch/1 cm border of excess dough around the outer edge. Use your fingers to tuck this dough under itself all the way around, then crimp as desired. Use a fork to poke holes all over the base and sides of the dough, then refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- Towards the end of chill time, heat the oven to 400°F/200°C with an oven rack in the center. Line the pie with parchment paper or foil, and fill to the top edge with pie weights (I use ceramic pie weights, but dried beans or legumes also work great). Place the pie pan on a parchment lined baking sheet. Transfer to the oven and bake until the edge is lightly golden brown, 15 to 18 minutes. Remove the pie weights, prick the dough a few more times with a fork, and return to the oven until the base and sides appear dry and matte, 3 to 5 minutes more. Cool completely before using.
- In a large bowl, toss the berries with the lemon juice and granulated sugar. Let macerate for at least 1 hour, or up to 3 hours; toss the berries occasionally during the first 15 to 20 minutes to help ensure they’re all getting evenly juicy.
- Place a colander over a medium pot and pour the berries into it. Press down gently on the berries—you don’t want to smoosh the fruit too much, but you want to get all of the juices that you can into the pot. Transfer the berries to a bowl. Set the pot over medium heat, bring the juices to a simmer, and simmer until they have reduced to 80 grams (¼ cup). (The amount of time this takes will depend on how much juice your berries yield—more juices from super ripe summer fruit will take longer, while out of season fruit might only take a few minutes.) Remove from the heat.
- In a small bowl, mix the brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, salt, and vanilla bean seeds, if using (if using extract, you will add it later). Use your fingers to mix the ingredients until they’re uniformly combined. Toss the brown sugar mixture with the berries to combine well, then pour the reduced juices over and toss again. (If using vanilla extract, add it and toss to combine.) Transfer this mixture to the cooled crust in an even layer.
- For the drop biscuit topping & assembling the pie:
- Heat the oven to 375°F/190°C with a rack in the lower third of the oven.
- Make the biscuit topping: In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, and salt to combine. Add the butter and mix with your hands or a pastry cutter until the butter is almost fully incorporated into the flour, with just a few small visible pieces remaining.
- Add the buttermilk and vanilla extract and mix until a sticky batter forms. Dollop the biscuit topping randomly over the surface of the pie. You may not cover the whole surface of the pie; that’s ok (and remember the biscuit will also spread). Sprinkle the surface of the biscuit generously with turbinado sugar.
- Transfer the pie to the oven and bake until the crust is deeply golden brown and the filling is bubbling around the edges and/or a tester inserted into the center of the biscuit topping comes out clean, 60 to 75 minutes. Cool completely before slicing and serving.
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