July Micro Bake Off: Peach Cobbler

Summer in a casserole dish

If the farmer’s market abundance is any indication, peaches are in tip top condition right now! I received quite a few requests for a peach cobbler bake off on Instagram and let me explain why I didn’t turn this into a full-fledged 9 recipe bake off: while I know that you can eat peach cobbler at room temperature, it seemed like baking 9 cobblers and having tasters taste them all at peak condition would require some miraculous logistics.

So: I collected and compared more than 30 recipes across the internet and whittled them down to just 3 recipes to compare.

Peach Cobbler: The Recipe Contenders

A Cozy Kitchen

I chose A Cozy Kitchen’s recipe for its simplicity. If I’m making cobbler, I’m usually not trying to make this an elaborate baking project. I love a recipe that calls for ingredients I always have on hand (flour, sugar, butter, milk) with no special equipment required!

Recipe characteristics include:

• Peaches get mixed with sugar, starch, lemon and vanilla

• The topping gets mixed in a bowl

• Adrianna notes that you can use fresh or frozen peaches (we love flexibility!)

Renee Erickson

Renee’s already notable recipe was further popularized by Smitten Kitchen and is a little more fussy than A Cozy Kitchen (it does require a stand mixer) but uses such an unusual hot water technique that I had to try it.

Recipe characteristics include:

• Fresh chopped peaches get dressed in lemon zest and juice, nothing more

• Butter gets creamed in a stand mixer to create the batter

• Sugar gets sprinkled over the top of the cobbler and hot water gets drizzled over everything before baking

Claire Saffitz

Similar to the strawberry scone micro bake off, Claire’s biscuit cobbler is by far the most labor-intensive. This is comparing a biscuit cobbler against batter cobblers which isn’t exactly apples-to-apples, but it made for a fun test nonetheless. Would the extra labor be worth it?? I wondered as sweat dripped down my face as I watched the peach juice bubble in their cauldron.

Recipe characteristics include:

• Frozen butter that gets grated into cream-based biscuits

• Scooping and chilling the biscuits prior to baking

• Cooking the spiced peaches on the stovetop for around 25 minutes to reduce the juices

After distributing the scones to 5 different tasters, here were the results

Third place