So in all that talk of high fiber foods, I tried to go beyond the beans and looked for something tasty and dessert-like. I found a recipe in one of my gifted cookbooks, “Williams-Sonoma Essentials of Healthful Cooking.” The book had a whole section of foods based on properties like high in fiber or lowfat, etc. and a table of recipes and stats. I keyed in on the dessert that said 7 grams of fiber per serving.
I initially bought all the ingredients for a dinner with friends, but when I started making it, I realized that the clock I’d been timing my day by had not yet been reset for the season. So, rather than be 45 minutes late, I cooked it later. Then we ate it for dessert, and breakfast, and snacks for the next few days.
Even after all that, I still liked it. That’s gotta say something, right?
My few complaints were these: As I started cutting up the berries and placing them in the bowl, they was way more than the suggested 8X8 pan would hold and not nearly enough crust. Also, there is no way I found that you can smooth out the crust over the berries. I tried oiling a clean spoon and being very careful until I lost my patience. My solution the second time around was to drop smaller half-spoonfulls all over. The crust gets mushy pretty fast. I prefer something a little crispier on my cobbler, but managed to get a little of that back by popping servings back in the oven under the broiler.
This weekend I made it again for a family dinner. I abandoned most of the high-fiber, healthy part of it because I really needed to eat something new. For the filling, I replaced the berries in the recipe with a couple cups of frozen marionberries and most of a bag of frozen peaches. Instead of raspberry jam, I used apricot preserves left in my refrigerator from another recipe, a touch of honey and I was out of instant tapioca so used about 1 1/2 tablespoons of corn starch. I also used regular buttermilk.
I liked the berry version better, but then again, I’m a pretty big fan of berries.
Triple Berry Cobbler
(from “Williams-Sonoma Essentials of Healthful Cooking”)
7 grams of fiber, 4 grams protein, 61 carbs, 7 grams fat
Filling
2 cups blueberries
4 cups raspberries
4 cups strawberries, stemmed and sliced in half
1/4 cup raspberry jam
1 Tbs instant tapioca
Crust
1 cup unbleached flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
kosher salt
3 Tbs. unsalted butter, room temperature
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup nonfat buttermilk
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix together berries and carefully fold in jam and tapioca. (I heated up the jam a bit to make it runny and mixed the tapioca in before pouring it over the berries.)
Mix flour, baking soda and baking powder together. In a separate bowl, cream butter and sugar together until fluffy and pale. Add half the buttermilk and half the dry ingredients and combine until getting sticky. Add remaining buttermilk and dry ingredients and mix just until it’s a sticky mass. Don’t overmix.
Drop spoonfuls of crust over the berries. Smooth it out a little (if you can), but don’t worry about gaps.
Bake 40 minutes or until top is golden and filling bubbles up on the sides and through the gaps.
Remove to a wire rack to cool.
