Dairy-Free Strawberry Cobbler
UM yes, dairy-free strawberry cobbler, yessssss. YOU ARE GOLD. You are also red. And more deeply golden brown than bright and shiny gold. But in essence, you are gold.
I’ve posted two cobbler recipes on the blog before (this caramel apple snickerdoodle cobbler and this lemon cookie cobbler). Both were cobblers that used an actual cookie dough as their topping. So technically, this strawberry cobbler is the first classic-style cobbler on the blog.
Not that the cobbler topping here is either airy and light and weird (like lots of cobblers are) or heavy and thick and cookie dough-like (like my past cobblers were). It’s a beautiful inbetweener, this strawberry cobbler is.
If you’re pondering as to why the cobbler pictured here looks more like a crumble than a cobbler, I have an adequate answer for you. The answer is that this cobbler uses brown sugar in its dough. All and only brown sugar. Which, honestly, I think all cobblers should utilize.
Because the brown sugar provides so much more richness and so much more flavor and so much more tenderness and moistness than white sugar does. It also imparts a more dense texture to the dough, which I don’t mind in the slightest.
I mean, I’m not looking for mounds of fluffy cake atop my fruit here, mmmmkay? Cuz then I’d use white sugar. I want a substantial amount of rich and tasty clumps of weighty dough on alllll my cobblers. All of them.
Let’s get to the strawberry mixture for a sec though.
There’s a special ingredient in it: orange juice. OOOOOOH.
The orange juice not only tenderizes the strawberry slices and makes them that much more soft and juicy, it also adds a wonderful extra tang to the fruit, which is quite the epic contrast to the sweet cobbler dough atop them.
We’ve also got some sugar (just a little bit, we still want the fruit nice and tart), vanilla extract, and a bit of cornstarch for thickening.
Das it. Slice up the strawberries. Toss them with the above-mentioned ingredients. And fruit mixture fintio.
Oh oh. Also. You can totes use frozen strawberries if you don’t have fresh ones available. No need to thaw them, even.
Now, back to the brown sugar cobbler dough.
There’s flour, obvs. And brown sugar, like mentioned. Again, not a lot, because this isn’t a cookie dough here, it’s a cobbler dough. And cobblers are generally meant to be a little less sweet.
And there’s ground nutmeg, a favorite addition of mine. I LOVE desserts that combine strawberries with nutmeg. There’s something about the combo of these flavors that delights me.
And as for the “non-dairy” part. Oil is used in place of butter. I personally never miss the taste of butter in my crumbles/crisps/cobblers when I substitute it with oil. And I doubt you will either, in our strawberry cobbler here.
There are a few more things in the dough, but eh, I’ll let you just read them in the ingredient list below.
Also, I must mention that this is the first recipe on the blog since last summer that contains spring/summer fruits!!!! BERRIES AND SUMMER STONE FRUITS ARE OFFICIALLY IN BUSINESS.
Juicy and tangy and sweet and tart strawberries. Topped with mounds of crispy yet tender yet dense yet soft brown sugar cobbler dough with hints of rich nutmeg and vanilla.
Damn I’m glad it’s spring.
Dairy-Free Strawberry Cobbler
Yield: about 8 servings
Fruit Mixture:
3 cups sliced strawberries (fresh or frozen)
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/4 cup orange juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon cornstarch
Cobbler Dough:
1 cup packed flour
1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup oil
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly grease an 8” baking pan or pie dish. Place dish onto baking sheet (to catch juice that may spill over sides during baking).
2. In a medium bowl, stir together the sliced strawberries with the rest of the fruit mixture ingredients until strawberries are evenly coated. Set aside while preparing dough.
3. In a large bowl, stir together the dry cobbler ingredients. Add in the oil, egg, and vanilla extract and mix until just combined.
4. Pour fruit into prepared baking dish (d0n’t strain). Drop flattened clumps of the dough over the strawberries.
5. Bake cobbler for 28-35 minutes, until fruit juices are bubbling and top is golden brown. Serve hot or at room temperature.
