Month-of-Mini-Desserts: Blueberry Cobbler-in-a-Jar for One

I’ve written in my food column for The Pinewood News about keeping pre-made spice blends and food mixes on hand to speed up meals. My own pre-made spice blends and food mixes, that is. The stuff you buy has too many unpronounceable ingredients for my taste.

I can serve DH a chocolate mug cake in 5 minutes from measuring out the mix to mixing it with water to cooking in the microwave for 1-1½  minutes.  That’s a pretty quick dessert, start to finish. And it’s because I keep the cake mix in a zipper bag in the pantry. Five tablespoons mix with 3 tablespoons water, mix, add stuff, nuke, dessert is served.

The same thing for fruit cobbers, except you cook them in the oven, but the prep is a breeze. Take six tablespoons of this cobbler mix, sprinkle on fruit in a half-pint jar, top with butter, and you can put your cobbler in the oven in under five minutes.

A version of this appeared in our local paper (Jan D’Atri’s column), but, of course, I messed with it! The recipe as written didn't work for me, so I modified it. Start with your own pre-made cobbler mix.

Cobbler Mix: (servings: enough for 8 half-pint jars)

1½ cups flour

1½ cups sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon salt

Whisk together all ingredients. Store in a sealed container in cool, dry place near your flour.

When ready to use, put six tablespoons on top of single-serving fruit in half-pint jar. Top with butter and bake.

Blueberry Cobbler for One        

¾ cup fresh or frozen blueberries

6 tablespoons cobbler mix

1 tablespoon butter

Preheat oven to 350°.

Place blueberries in a half-pint jar.

Top with cobbler mix, shaking down the jar to disperse the mix and make room at the top.

Add butter to the top in the middle of the cobbler mix.

Bake for about 60-65 minutes, until the top crust has browned. Cool. Eat warm or put on lid and store in refrigerator. Great with vanilla ice cream. Mix it up by using peaches, or apples, or some other favorite fruit.

DH’s Rating: 4 Tongues Up

He loves fruit desserts almost as much as chocolate ones. The blueberries created enough juiciness that it wasn’t dry nor too juicy due to the cobbler mix down in and around the blueberries.