Strawberry and Mango Cobbler

Some days I binge on Food Network. I actually really like Food Network Canada better than the programming in the states. Rock on, Canadia! (Yes, I did mean to spell it that way. :P) One of the shows I enjoy the most is Chef at Home. The cool thing about Michael Smith is that he's actually trying to teach people how to combine flavors and how to cook. Even when you look up one of his recipes on the website, he prefaces it with this:

"A recipe is merely words on paper; a guideline, a starting point from which to improvise. It cannot pretend to replace the practiced hand and telling glance of a watchful cook. For that reason feel free to stir your own ideas into this dish. When you cook it once, it becomes yours, so personalize it a bit. Add more of an ingredient you like or less of something you don't like. Try substituting one ingredient for another. Remember words have no flavour, you have to add your own!"

Awesomeness. So anyway, I'm watching his show one day and he's making this amazing strawberry and mango cobbler. Holy crap, yum! And then he did something really cool that I had never thought of before. Instead of melting margarine and mixing it in the dough, and instead of cutting in small cold pieces of margarine, he froze the dang stick and grated it in! What a freaking awesome idea. I think this could work for biscuits and other stuff like that. Especially if you don't have a pastry blender or if you get annoyed by trying to use one. I had some Earth Balance sticks that I just stuck in the freezer for whenever I felt like making something like this.

So after scribbling down the recipe (okay, who am I kidding. The OCD part of SaraJane wrote it down neatly in my cooking journal), I was kind of excited about trying this new technique with the EB. I was going to just substitute some of the fruit for others and THEN the market across the street from work put cases of mangos on sale for $7.99. Oh hell, yes. I totally carried that box of mangos home on the bus. Heh. That was kind of funny, I have to admit. Mangos are my all-time favorite food, so I was stoked. After forcing myself to stop eating nothing but mangos for days, I managed to save a few to cut up for this cobbler.

He used frozen fruit on the show. I froze mine and then had to thaw them out to use them. They were so juicy, I sort of had a block of mango in the freezer. Between the freezing and thawing and baking, they sort of liquified. Weird, right? They're still fine and the cobbler still tastes really good, but it looks a little weird. I guess either use frozen or fresh, but don't thaw the frozen ones.

Strawberry and Mango Cobbler

2 cups fresh or frozen strawberries
2 cups fresh or frozen mango
1/2 cup cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 cup flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
2 tbsp sugar
Pinch of salt
1/2 tbsp baking powder
1/2 cup margarine, frozen (one stick of Earth Balance is 1/2 cup)
1/2 cup soy milk


Preheat your oven to 375°F. Place fruit into a large bowl and toss well with the flour, sugar and lemon juice. Put the fruit mixture into a baking dish. I used one of those square pyrex ones. It's best if the fruit fills the dish but doesn't rise above the edges. You don't want to get hot bubbly fruit running over the edge of the dish as it cooks.

For the topping, stir together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, salt and baking powder. Grate in the frozen margarine and mix the dough together with either a wooden spoon or your fingers.

Pour in the soy milk and stir until mixture comes together and forms a rough dough. It'll be a bit dry, but that's what you want. Either use a spoon or your fingers and put the dough in pieces over the fruit, covering the entire top evenly.

Bake for 45 minutes.