Summer is here and that means local fruit is coming into season. So what can you do with it? Seattle Chef Tom Douglas takes you into his home kitchen with tips for a Cobbler, a Crisp and a Buckle. He shows and explains how to make all three.
"What I want to talk with you today about is one of the questions I get asked most when it comes to fruit desert is what's the difference between a Buckle, a Cobbler and a Crisp and there's really not a lot. It's pretty much the same base of fruit, but the topping tend to very and cooking time varies.
I have a cobbler and this is basically fruit with a biscuit or short bread topping. And we have a crisp with a brown sugar butter and sometimes oats.
I have a buckle which is a little bit like a coffee cake, where it's a cake batter with fruit in it. I'll show you little bit on how to make those, the techniques around making those.
So I have my cherries here today. I've got tapioca starch in there. They way to bring out flavor in any fruit is to add a little citrus zest, or even sometimes black pepper. It will pop the fruit flavor.
These are sour cherries from Washington. and they are good for tarts and other forms of backing because they are less sweet and less juicy then say a Bing cherry, all though they all work.
Another thing I like to do to my fruit is give it a spice kick so where going to go over here and grin
d some fresh cinnamon and fresh star anise. This is the way to get the brightest flavors out of your spices is to grind them whole.
One of the tricks we do at the restaurant to give a nice crunchy topping it to prebake our streusel. We get it nice and crisp because the worst thing about a crisp, is when it's not crisp. We're just gonna put our crisp toppings onto our cherries. Ok there's our crisp, there's our buckle and the last thing is the cobbler.
I've got short bread bisquet and basically, you just want to crumble it over the top. It will rise because there's baking powder in them, so they will raise and come together. At the end of the day after they're baked, you can see how they come together." -- Tom Douglas
