Maylee at Beyond Gumbo 
The 4th of July calls for festive and patriotic dessert. Something which packs flavor punch and contibutes to the festive spirit. “Americana Cobbler” is fits the menu. I’m capturing the “red, white and blue” color theme by including blueberries, maraschino cherries and whipped cream (or ice cream for an à la mode version). Blueberries and peaches are such a great aromatic fruit combination — it is just the right flavor blend for this patriotic dessert. My favorite scone recipe made the “stars” for the cobbler which stole the show. If you want an quick and easy dessert for a patriotic holiday meal, try this recipe. I served it on Memorial Day for friends and we gobbled up almost the entire cobbler!
As an added bonus, I made the cobbler again, mixing up a super-easy and quick version. My motivation was to verify several of the ingredient quantities in my patriotic cobbler recipe. This second cobbler turned out so good that I am also including this super-easy recipe too, at the end of the post.
These two recipes (Americana Cobbler and Super-Easy Peach Cobbler) are much quicker to make than a pie, and taste just as good.
Recipe Inspiration
The inspiration for this recipe is my small blueberry patch crop. Yes, I did say small. Usually I have a large, stellar crop of blueberries which is more than I can ever use. However, this year my crop amounted to only one small bowl. I believe that a late season freeze had something to do with the problem. I have four blueberry bushes — sadly only a few blueberries. With about one cup of blueberries, I am cherishing them for the right recipe. My solution was to make the “Americana Cobbler” for a fancy supper meal with guests for Memorial Day — and I plan to make it again on the 4th of July.
To “stretch” the blueberries, I mixed them with canned peaches for the filling. This made enough fruit for one cobbler. These two fruits are such a aromatic flavor combination — I was pleased with the results.
The blueberries were supposed to make the “blue” color — however my baked cobbler has more of a purple tint. Oh, well.
The maraschino cherry and whipped topping added glimpses of red and white color to my dessert.
Pastry “Stars”
My “star” pastry pieces came to the rescue and provided a patriotic slant to the dessert. For my cobbler topping, I used my favorite scone recipe (omitting the crystalized ginger). Scones are a variaton of biscuits; they are rich and sweet and the complemented the fruit filling perfectly. These cute little star cookie cutters came from that all-American craft store, Michaels. I was able to go on-line and determine that the local store had the cookie cutters in stock. They even gave the isle number for the cookie cutters. No more driving around town to locate cookie cutters or ordering from Amazon. Hybrid shopping at its finest.
Recipe
This is recipe uses only a couple of ingredients and the cobbler is easy to mix up. Since fresh peaches are not yet available, I used canned, sliced peaches. Cornstarch and sugar thickened and sweetened the fruit filling. This photo shows only two cans of peaches. However, in my final recipes, I increased the peaches to three cans to serve six people.
To make the fruit filling, drain the canned, sliced peaches, reserving the juice. Place the drained peaches and bluebrries in an oiled 9″-square casserole dish. In a small bowl, add the sugar and cornstarch to 1 cup of the reserved juice and stir to dissolve to make a syrup. Pour over the fruit. Cover with foil and bake for about 30 minutes until cooked through and bubbly. Then remove the foil. It will be soupy, but the slightly thickened juice goes well with the pastry topping.
The next step is to make the pastry stars for the cobbler. I did this while the cobbler filling was baking. I used my scone recipe from a past blog post.
The scone recipe is basically a rich biscuit pastry and is mixed up like biscuits. Cut the shortening (butter) into the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar). Then stir in buttermilk and an egg. The dough is sticky; add flour to a pastry board and knead several times. Then pat into a square which is about 1-inch thick. I froze the dough for about 20 minutes so that it would be easier to handle when cutting out the shapes and floured the star cutters after each cut to avoid sticking.
This set of star cookie cutters had four sizes — I used the smaller sizes. There was plenty of leftover dough, so I re-rolled the dough and baked additional shapes in a small pie pan. Use these small pastries for a treat somewhere along the way. They are tasty — won’t last long.
To finish the cobbler, arrange the star pastry shapes on top of the filling. Turn the oven temperature up to 425 degrees. Bake for 10 minutes until the pastry stars are brown on top. The pastry dough rose up like a biscuit is supposed to, and did the stards did not sink to the bottom of the cobbler filling.
This cobbler is delicious when served hot. I added whipped topping and a cherry for the Memorial Day celebration. Ice cream would be great with this cobbler, too. Peaches, blueberries and an absolutely knock-out pastry topping make this cobbler extra special. Enjoy on this 4th of July Holiday.
My recipe for a Super-Easy Peach Cobbler variation follows this recipe.
Americana Peach & Blueberry Cobbler for the Fourth of July
Ingredients for Cobbler:
- 3 (15-oz) cans sliced peaches, plus 1 cup juice
- 1 cup fresh blueberries
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 2 Tbsp cornstarch
- 1 recipe of scone pastry with 9 cut-out scones (see recipe below)
- whipped topping or vanilla ice cream, for serving
- marachino cherries, for serving
Method and Steps for Cobbler:
- Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly oil a 9″ x 9″ casserole dish.
- Drain sliced peaches, reserving 1 cup peach juice. Place peaches into casserole dish.
- Arrange fresh blueberries on top of peaches.
- In a small bowl, combine reserved peach juice, sugar and cornstarch. Stir to completely dissolve cornstarch and combine in gredients.
- Pour syrup over fruit in casserole dish.
- Cover tightly with aluminum foil. Bake in 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.
- Remove from oven and uncover.
- Increase heat in oven to 425 degrees
- Arrange the 9 cut-out star scone pastry pieces on top of the fruit. (Place reamining pastry pieces in a pie pan and bake along with the cobbler.)
- Return to the oven and bake, uncovered, for 10 additional minutes until pastries are brown on top. Bake both the cobbler and the extra pastry pieces.
- Remove from oven.
- Serve hot. Scoop cobbler, with either one or two pastry stars, onto a dessert dishes. The cobbler is juicy — add some of the juice to each plate.
- Garnish with whipped topping (or vanilla ice cream) and place a maraschino cherry on the top of each serving.
Ingredients for the Scones:
- 1-1/2 cup all-purpose flour, plus more for flouring the pastry board
- 2 Tbsp sugar
- 1 Tbsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup butter, cut into small chunks
- 1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp cultured buttermilk (shake up buttermilk)
- 1 large egg
Method and Steps for making Scones:
- In a large bowl, combine all-purpose flour. sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir to combine.
- Cut butter chunks into flour mixture using the back of a fork. Press hard to completely break up butter and thoroughly intregrate it into the flour mixture. (Mixture should appear as fine crumbs.)
- In a small bowl, combine cultured buttermilk and large egg. Add to the flour/butter mixture and stir with fork just until combined (if a few pieces of flour remain, that’s okay).
- Transfer to a well-floured pastry board. Spinkle flour on top of the dough. With your hands, knead the dough for about 6 to 10 times. Add small amounts of flour, if needed. Do not add excessive amounts of flour.
- With your hands (not a rolling pin) gently press into a 6″ square which is approximately one inch thick.
- Transfer to a small cutting board or tray and freeze for 20 minutes.
- Using a well-floured small star cookie or biscuit cutter. cut out star shapes. Flour the cookie cutter between each cut. Try to avoid “sawing” motions, cut straight up and down.
- Transfer to a floured tray or plate. Gather remaining pieces of dough and press into another square. Try not to handle excessively. Continue to cut out star shapes or other shapes.
- Use 9 of the stars for the Americana Cobbler topping. Transfer remaining shapes to a small pie pan.
- Bake the small shapes for 10 minutes at 425 degrees and save for other treats.
My “Super-Easy Peach Cobbler” is very similar to the “Americana Peach & Blueberry Cobbler” recipe. The main difference is that I whipped up “drop” scone-biscuit dough for the topping rather than making rolled scones and star shapes. The scone dough contains both buttermilk and sweet milk. The dough is thinner so that it can be dropped on top of the peach filling. No need to cook the filling first; just drop the scone dough on top and bake!
Super-Easy Peach Cobbler for the Fourth of July
Ingredients for Cobbler:
- 4 (15-oz) cans sliced peaches, plus 1 cup juice
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 2 Tbsp cornstarch
- 1 recipe of “drop” scone pastry dough
- whipped topping or vanilla ice cream, for serving
- marachino cherries, for serving
Method and Steps for Cobbler:
- Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly oil a 9″ x 9″ casserole dish.
- Drain sliced peaches, reserving 1/2 cup peach juice. Place peaches into casserole dish.
- In a small bowl, combine reserved peach juice, sugar and cornstarch. Stir to completely dissolve cornstarch blend ingredients.
- Pour syrup over fruit in casserole dish.
- Make “drop” scone dough (see recipe below). Drop by 9 spoonfuls on top of peach filling.
- Place in pre-heated oven at 400 degree. Bake, uncovered, for 30 minutes until cobbler peach filling is bubbly and pastry is brown on top.
- Remove from oven.
- Serve hot. Spoon cobbler into dessert dishes, scooping up some of the juices in the bottom of the casserole dish.
- Garnish with whipped topping (or vanilla ice cream) and place a maraschino cherry on the top of each serving.
Ingredients for the Scones:
- 1-1/2 cup all-purpose flour, plus more for flouring the pastry board
- 2 Tbsp sugar
- 1 Tbsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup butter, cut into small chunks
- 1/2 cup cultured buttermilk (shake up buttermilk)
- 1/2 cup sweet milk
- 1 large egg
Method and Steps for making “drop” scone dough:
- In a large bowl, combine all-purpose flour. sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir to combine.
- Cut butter chunks into flour mixture using the back of a fork. Press hard to completely break up butter and thoroughly intregrate it into the flour mixture. (Mixture should appear as fine crumbs.)
- In a small bowl, combine cultured buttermilk, sweet milk and large egg.
- Make a well in the center of the flour/butter mixture. Pour in the egg/milk mixture and stir wit a cook spoon just until combined (if a few pieces of flour remain, that’s okay). The pastry will be very soft, the consistency of thick cake batter.
- Set aside until ready to prepare and bake peach cobbler.
NOTE: As a variation, 1 cup fresh blueberries can be added to the peaches prior to baking.
This looks delicious, Maylee, and very patriotic!
Thank You! Happy 4th of July!
Yum, I love a good cobbler, and yours with the biscuit-type dough is my favorite. Good job with the star cutters!
Thank You! Happy July 4th to you folks!
LOVE 😍 the Star shapes! Great recipe!! 💯
Hello, that’s for the comment and for visiting my blog!