Gluten free fruit cobbler

This recipe comes from celiac.com, a great resource for those transitioning to gluten-free living. We were planning dinner with The H's parents, and I wanted to use some of our co-op haul for dessert. I was looking for something that would go well with with ice cream. Fruit cobbler sounded just right.

I used four of these lovely peaches, and the rest of the organic blueberries, perhaps 1 cup.

Gluten Free Fruit Cobbler

from Celiac.com

1 stick of butter

1 cup gluten-free flour blend (your choice--I used Bob's Red Mill GF all-purpose)

1/2 tsp xanthan gum

1 cup sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup kefir or buttermilk (I used milk soured with 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar)

1 large can peach halves, or 2-3 cups frozen thawed berries to which 1/4 cup sugar has been added (I had a total of 4 cups fresh fruit)

Ground cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, or other spices, to taste (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 350* and melt the butter in a glass 8x8 baking dish.

2. Mix all other ingredients, except for fruit. Pour batter onto melted butter. If you stir it around to incorporate the butter, you'll end up with a rich, buttery cakelike cobbler. If you don't mix it in, you'll have a chewy, buttery edge (I mixed it together).

3. Spread the fruit on top of the crust and sprinkle with spices of your choice. Bake 45 minutes or until set in the center.

Because of the full stick of butter and loads of sugar called for, I can't really consider this "clean" though there are certainly ways to clean it up.

I think the crust could get away with less than a full stick of butter (see how much is just sitting on top after I mixed it in? Yikes...), and the sugar in the dry crust mix could likely be cut back a bit and probably exchanged for sucanat. I just didn't have enough to try it.

I used maple flakes for the sugar on the fruit, though as I typed the recipe above, I think I could have omitted that since I wasn't using frozen berries, which are notably more tart than fresh peaches! If I were to use frozen, I'd try mixing them with honey rather than a dry sugar.

The spices I used on top of the fruit were cinnamon and nutmeg. I used a light dusting of each.

The middle was a bit soft after 45 minutes, so I left it in the oven for another 10, then turned it off and let the heat continue cooking it while we cleaned up after dinner.

It was still somewhat soft when we ate it, but since there was no raw egg or anything potentially harmful in it, we just dug in.

This made 9 servings. The H and his brother had two servings each, in rapid succession. It was one of the better gluten-free desserts I have eaten, let alone made from scratch. We didn't eat it with ice cream, but it was great nonetheless.