Our Trip to Phillips Farm and Blackberry Cobbler

Last weekend, we took a lovely trip to Hunterdon Country, New Jersey. DH has some family there and we went out to see family, swim in their swimming pool and play play play. We decided to stay over and spend the next day at a pick-your-own farm. I have been wanting to go to a pick your own farm all summer. We love the country and I thought it'd be fun for the whole family. When we went to Columbia Country over Memorial Day weekend none of the fruits were ripe enough. We ran out of time through the summer, but this weekend it was perfect. Hurricane Earl even obliged and blew off to the East and left us with a practically cloudless sky and low humidity.

We chose Phillips Farm because we bought berries from them at the Union Square Farmer's market last week and they were close by DH's aunt and uncle's house. After having an amazing day hanging out there followed by another lovely morning with family we were off to Phillips Farm. The farm had raspberries, blackberries and apples for picking. We decided on blackberries and raspberries because we already had a ton of apples at the house. After finding a few raspberries we tried blackberries, but we couldn't find any good spots. Then DH went a few rows down and hit the motherload. We collected almost 8 pounds of berries, mostly blackberries. Here is what I did with them. Yummmmmmmmm.The berries themselves I just mixed with a little brown sugar. I cooked them in a 425 degree oven for 20 minutes and then placed the cobbler topping on top. I found the recipe in a great cookbook that I have called simply 'Pies' that lists no author, only that it's copyrighted by Paragon books. It consisted of:

1 and 1/4 cup of flour (I used some whole wheat pastry flour and some half white flour)

1/2 cup sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder

1/2 teaspoon of salt

3 oz of butter (6 tablespoons)

1 beaten egg

5-6 oz milk

Combine all the dry ingredients. Then cut in the butter like you would for a pie dough. When the dough is a coarse crumb, make a well in the center and add the milk and eggs, which you have combined and beaten together. mix in the wet and the dry. It will be quite wet. Spoon the batter over the half cooked berries and cook for another 15-20 minutes or until the cobbler topping has browned. I haven't been buying ice cream, so I mixed some vanilla and honey into some heavy whipping cream and poured that over as a sauce. So good. Now only another 7 pounds of berries to go.

We definitely picked more than we can handle. I froze several pounds for jam later or more cobblers. I suppose we can always live off them for the entire fall. Thing 1 ate about a pound himself both in the field and on the way home. Thing 2 strangely enough doesn't care for them. Too bad, more for us!