Everything tastes better when it has been cooked in a cast iron skillet. Fortunately I was gifted my grandmother’s skillet and my great grandmother’s chicken fryer skillet, so even though this is my art studio’s web site, I will try to pass along some old recipes from time to time here, because good country cooking is an art form, too.
Here is an old time recipe worth sharing in these hectic times. This is the kind of cooking grandmothers did without referring to a recipe- they just knew how to whip a cobbler up like it was the most natural thing, eyeballing the ingredients rather than precisely measuring them. Cobblers are better if you have fresh clingstone peaches right off the tree, but if canned peaches are all you have, they will have to do.
First, set your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and put your iron skillet in to heat, too. The skillet should be an average one, about the size of a dinner plate. Gather your ingredients:
Ingredients
1 Stick of Butter
1 Cup of Self-Rising Flour
1 Cup of Sugar
1 Cup of Milk (sour milk is just fine)
1/4 teaspoon Nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 Can of Peach pie filling, about 21 ounces (do not drain … if using peaches in syrup or in juice instead of pie filling, add a tablespoon of flour to help thicken the liquid in the can)
When your oven and skillet get to 350, add the stick of butter to the skillet to melt.
Then just barely stir together all your ingredients except the peaches, and dump the mixture into the skillet, spreading it a bit. The butter will ooze up at the edges, don’t worry, that is what you want.
Then dump the peaches all over the top and shut the oven door. Set your timer to 1 hour, after which it should look nicely browned.
After removing it from the oven, be sure to let it cool down a bit, 20 minutes or so, before digging in.
— Susan A. Walton