I’ve had all sorts of cobblers before, most of which have been fruit-based — peach cobbler, blueberry cobbler, apple cobbler, cherry cobbler… all delicious. But I’d never heard of chocolate cobbler until I saw this Tasty Kitchen blog post (a cooking community founded and led by The Pioneer Woman, whom I mentioned previously) come through on my Google Reader earlier this month. I was immediately intrigued by the idea and was determined to try it, especially when my chocolate cravings struck today.
Here is the mouthwatering result:
The recipe, which you can find here, is surprisingly simple! The ingredients are very basic and are things that you normally have already stocked in your pantry — I didn’t have to make an extra trip to the grocery store or anything. The steps went super quickly, and the batter was ready to go into the oven in ten minutes!
What is at first alarming about the recipe is that you create the main cake batter, then pile on a mix of sugar and light brown sugar, and then pour hot tap water on top, and then stick it in the oven without stirring it. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? I thought that there must be some missing step or misprint in the recipe, but the blog post assured that this was how it was supposed to be, so I trusted them despite my reservations as I uneasily stuck this visually unappealing mixture into the oven.
Somehow, 40 minutes later when you take it out of the oven, the liquidy portion has sunk into the inside and the top has set in a cakey layer. It’s like magic! (Or some science to baking that I can’t quite grasp.)
Dan described it as a “liquid brownie” when he took his first few bites, and then when the cake mixed more with the syrupy filling, he said it started tasting like pudding. He couldn’t get enough of it and ended up eating about a third of the cobbler! 😮
It was delicious (although admittedly indulgent) and the best part is that it’s so easy to make with on-hand ingredients. Big thanks to Tasty Kitchen for such a great recipe! Dan and I were talking about how we want to try our hand at some fruit cobblers too! We’ll let you know how that goes…