I ate leftovers for lunch and leftovers for dinner, so let’s talk about dessert! Last night’s dessert, a peach and nectarine cobbler. It was… well, what’s a succinct way of saying “a total waste of peaches and a really crappy recipe I should’ve known better than to follow?”
Ah yes, a failure. That’s the word.
Faced with a dwindling supply of vegan butter, I wanted a recipe that used oil in the biscuit portion of the cobbler. I found one! But as I was following it, warning signs were flashing left and right: Hmm, no salt? Really? and Wait, you want me to cook this at 450˚?! and Just brown sugar? No white?
Ugh. Basically, I made a saucy peach casserole (OK, that part’s fine) topped with bland-ass, undercooked biscuits. UGH.
I knew – KNEW! – that stupid 450˚ oven temperature was going to cause trouble, yet I still followed the directions. (I hate being a consummate rule-follower.) Most cobblers cook at 350˚ or maybe 375˚ for a good half hour at least, which gives the bready biscuit topping time to bake through without burning. LOL, guess what happened at 450˚? I took it out after the prescribed ~25 minutes to find the undersides of the biscuits completely raw and doughy, yet the tops already beginning to catch. Come ON. I lowered the temp and put them back in for another 10-15 minutes, but they were still pretty soft when they came out.
They were also tasteless. I’d even added a shake of salt when I noticed there wasn’t any in the recipe, but they were still bland AF. I suspect it’s partly because they only used brown sugar, which somehow doesn’t seem to have the assertive sweetness of white in baked goods. Don’t get me wrong — I’m actually pretty sensitive to overly sweet baked goods these days, so I don’t want like, tooth-melting sweetness. But I do want to taste some sweetness if I, y’know, added sugar.
I’m not going to link to the recipe here because I don’t want to call out this blogger’s less-than-stellar recipe. I know most bloggers don’t have legions of testers, so sometimes a mediocre recipe slips through. (I’m sure I’ve posted a few.) But let me just say: If you find a cobbler recipe that calls for a 450˚ oven and 22-25 minutes of baking time, run away and find another recipe.
(This one is yummo; you can use berries or replace them with sliced stone fruit. For a slightly different (and slightly richer) twist, I also have had luck with this one.)
vegga 
I remember reading an article/interview with this person who made a blog where they JUST tested blog/website recipes. They found usually the blogs were best, because recipes from networks or magazines were trying to churn out content without testing, while blogs had owners who had their reputations on the line. though I do see lots of content churning as well with blogs. I think sometimes too with blogs is that you get wellness blogs, where health comes before taste, which is a big no-no most of the time.
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That’s really interesting! Plus, recipes from networks/magazines might not be attributed to a single person, who would then have to take the ‘blame’ for a bad recipe. Whereas blog readers are always happy to complain… I’ve seen so many infuriating comments where people substitute half the ingredients and then complain that the finished product didn’t taste good. Uhh, you think?!
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