In Los Angeles if you have friends that live further than five miles away they may as well live a thousand miles away. Leif and I had friends who lived, as the crow flies, not quite twenty miles away and I can count on one hand how many times we saw them in the last two years we were there. Traffic precluded any spur of the moment or after work visits. As a result we did not have much of a social life outside of hanging out with my sister or our buddies in Pasadena (all of whom we adore and miss so much). Which, in truth, was not that big of an issue for us since Leif and I tend to be pretty insular. We've always been totally content to just hang out with each other, doing nothing. Of course the fact that we enjoy being together so much is awesome for our marriage but it is not so great for our social lives. No matter how much we would enjoy spending time with friends far away it was always easier to just not make the effort to do so.
But when we moved here our lives changed pretty significantly. Between Leif's family and our friends who had moved up here years before we did, our evenings and weekends have become much busier. Our quiet evenings at home and leisurely weekends have been replaced with dinner with friends and activities with family. It is totally different than the life we led in Los Angeles, which ultimately was part of the reason we wanted to move here. Portland makes this lifestyle accessible in a way that Los Angeles never was able to.
This cobbler was one I made to bring over to our friends' house as a kind of celebration for Leif's new job. It was the perfect ending to a perfect meal (seriously so good- Taffy you are an amazing cook) all while sitting outside drinking a glass of wine and watching the kids play. It was a breeze to make. The most complicated part to the whole thing was trying to gather enough blackberries from the green space down the street before Clio could stuff her face full of them.
The recipe I adapted was one from allrecipes and it was called a cobbler but it isn't like any traditional cobbler I've ever made before. It was more like the love child between a cobbler and a cake- a cakler, if you will. The mule of the berry dessert world.
Thanks for being delicious cakler.
3/4 cup AP flour
1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon granulated sugar (you may want to increase the sugar if the berries are tart)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk
2 cup berries
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. In an 8x8 baking dish, melt three tablespoons butter by placing it in the heating oven.
3. Whisk together the flour, 1/2 cup sugar, baking powder, and salt.
4. Whisk in the milk to the dry ingredients to make a thin batter.
5. Pour the batter over the melted butter in the baking dish.
6. Place the blackberries on top of the batter.
7. Sprinkle the remaining sugar on top.
8. Bake 60 minutes until brown and bubbly.
Yum! We are the same way about spending time just us. It's great! But there are times when good friends are nice too!
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