Apple Cobbler for Pre-Winter Days and Nights

By Cal Orey

Hello snow and and comfort cobbler! Made with fresh apples and covered with biscuits (or a crumble), this is a sweet-and-savory dish is to live for on cold pre-winter nights and chilly mornings at Lake Tahoe. While the old-fashioned dessert is popular in America, a country where apples are the pick of the crop,  time after time, it works for me, a Californian native.

One summer, I was on the road back home to San Jose. It was my mission to go to a Barnes and Noble bookstore and sign copies of my book “The Healing Powers of Coffee.” At home, I tried to pre-book a room at a fancy hotel. But mention of a “convention” hit me while on the phone. I thought it was a sign to be spontaneous and find an impromptu place. After the signing, looking for a hotel with room service — blueberry waffles and gourmet coffee was my dream — turned into a Hitchcock-type nightmare.

Hours and hours of driving in circles and “No Vacancy” from the Silicon Valley to San Bruno haunted me. By midnight, I ended up in Sunnyvale (I think) in a nondescript, crowded motel. I was dog-tired and petless; I slept like a princess. In the morning, I stumbled half asleep downstairs to a buffet breakfast: warm java with cream in plastic cups, a ripe banana and a cold Danish. I was homesick for home-cooking and my warmhearted critters.

This week, the second week of December, at the crack of dawn thanks to the pup, I brewed a cup of caramel-flavored coffee. It was hot with organic milk. Then, I whipped up a apple cobbler. It was heavenly to smell spices lingering in the kitchen as the cobbler baked in the old-but-charming black oven in the 1946 cabin.

APPLE HOME-STYLE COBBLER

1 cup Heart Healthy Bisquick mix

1 cup organic, 2 percent, reduced-fat milk

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

2 tablespoons European-style butter, cubed

2-3 cups fresh fruit, sliced (Granny Smith and Fuji apples or blackberries)

Raw sugar and cinnamon (to taste)

Stir Bisquick mix, milk and nutmeg in ungreased round baking cake pan. Add fruit. Place butter on top. Spoon medium sized circles of batter on top. Sprinkle with raw sugar. Bake at 350 degrees approximately 45-55 minutes or till golden brown. Heat oven to 375 degrees F. Stir together Bisquick mix, milk and nutmeg in ungreased round cake pan. Stir in butter until blended. Stir together sugar, cinnamon and peaches; spoon over batter. Serve warm with all natural vanilla ice cream. Makes 4 servings.

Once the cobbler was baked, I cut a small slice right out of the oven. There’s something about fruit and biscuits that made me feel warm and fuzzy. The dollop of whipped cream made the cobbler sweeter. A good night’s sleep on a trip without critters is amazing. But I’ll take my alarm clock pup, meowing kitty any day.