Rose Hip Wine - Day 3

"Ferm, baby, ferm! Vino inferno! Ferm, baby, ferm - makin' al-kee-hall..."



I know it looks a little scary, but we're just 2 days away from straining out all of the chunkage and moving this yumminess into a jug to continue fermenting. This is my first non-fruit wine, so I am both excited and nervous to taste this. Provided that the first sip doesn't kill me, I'll keep you posted on it's progress.

Aunt Ethel's Cobbler

Having recently stumbled upon a massive cache of frozen blueberries, I've been mulling over how to best use them - ice cream? sorbet? maybe pie? Then I came across the Huckle Buckle recipe contest over at Fat of the Land and knew immediately what I wanted to do with all of those lovely berries - make up a batch of Aunt Ethel's cobbler.



Aunt Ethel was the baker in my Grandmother's generation. She made this incredible cobbler for every family reunion and I remember passing up the home made ice cream for seconds on cobbler. Oh the calorie-careless days of youth...

Anyway, this is my version of Aunt Ethel's recipe. You can use just about any fruit that you want with this cobbler batter, but I most often use berries (blueberries, huckleberries or blackberries, typically) or, once in a while, peaches. My absolute favorite thing about this recipe - besides the taste! - is that it is SO quick and simple to make. I have mentioned my ineptitude at baking many times, but my success with this cobbler proves that foolproof recipes do exist, and if you're really lucky, you also have a really cool Great Aunt to give them to you. ;) Without further ado, Aunt Ethel's Cobbler-

Batter-
1/2 Stick Butter
1 1/2 c. Sugar
2 c. flour
1 c. milk
1 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. baking powder

Fruit-
1 1/2 c. blueberries (or just about any fruit)
1 tbsp sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter in a 11x7 (or similar size) casserole dish in the oven. Remove and let butter cool slightly.

In a large mixing bowl, mix the sugar, flour, salt & baking powder well.

In a separate bowl, measure out your berries or other fruits and sprinkle them with the tablespoon of sugar. Toss well.

Finally, add milk to the flour mixture and mix well until a thick batter forms. Pour the batter into the buttery casserole dish. Some butter will come up over the batter, that is ok. Lastly, sprinkle/drop the sugared berries into the batter - do not stir. Bake @ 350 degrees for about 1 hour, checking every so often to ensure that the top doesn't get too brown before the middle has had a chance to set-up. If you see this happening, you can put a piece of foil over the top to slow things down a bit. Check for doneness with a toothpick. Allow to cool for at least 10 minutes before serving.

This tastes AMAZING with vanilla ice cream, but is pretty fantastic all by itself.

Hippy Wine

After much dawdling, I finally got around to starting my first gallon of rose hip wine today. I've actually had these rose hips in the freezer for a while, being that I was 4 ounces shy of the amount required for the recipe that I wanted to use. Not able to ever lay my hands on more, I decided to make up the 4 ounce difference with the rose hip's botanical cousin, an apple.



I sliced, crushed, sugared and added water to these lovely hips (and half a yellow delicious apple) and set them to steep in the primary fermenter for 24 hours. Tomorrow I'll pitch the yeast and in a few days we'll see what we see. If this batch works out, I'll post the recipe here along with my fudges and observations.

On a related note, the hubby is starting another batch of beer today as well - a Czech/German Pilsner, he tells me, as if I'd have any idea at all what that meant. I figure that between our parallel booze brewing efforts, we will have a few lovely intoxicants to imbibe in the months and years to come.