Personal Peach Cobbler (and other fall stuff)

It's definitely fall. Where in central Vermont that once meant amazing foliage and crunchy fallen leaves to step on, it's now more about cloudy and rainy days with cold nights that justify the five days we spent hauling and stacking our three cords of firewood. (Whatever. I'll take it!) It also means pretty fall veggies, fruits, and... whatever this thing is.

(It's actually cauliflower. It's quite a hit with some stoners I know, though I haven't yet tasted it or heard any reviews from someone who has. It does have some cool mathematical properties, but I'm not sure how that impacts its taste.)

It's been a pretty good season of getting stuff from our CSA and picking our own whatever. A side note on that, by the way. We had "pick your own pumpkins" on the last day of our summer CSA. I was pretty excited about picking a nice fat pumpkin and hacking its stem off with a machete. So I was kind of confused when they didn't give us a machete when they pointed out the pumpkin patch. We went out there and all the pumpkins were already cut and just laying around on the ground.

Isn't that "pick-your-own" in the same sense that any produce aisle at a grocery store is pick-your-own? 

In any case, the point is that we have a bunch of pretty stuff that's all local and organic. (Except that melon with the sticker on it. That's from New Jersey.)

What I'm really trying to say is it's time to bake a bunch of fall stuff. Let's get this ADD party under control and get a recipe out there. There are really two: peach cobbler and pumpkin bread. To make it easier to find navigate later, I'll post pumpkin bread in a separate entry, though.

Ingredients 
(enough topping for about 3-4 one-person ramekins)

• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup rolled oats
• 1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted
• pinch baking soda
• pinch baking powder
• peaches, sliced

Procedure

Preheat oven to 350F. Fill little baking cups/ramekins almost to the top with sliced peaches. Add a tablespoon of water into each ramekin. [Note: I use peaches that I froze, so there is probably marginally more water content there than if you're using fresh ones, especially if the fresh ones you're using aren't that ripe. So you may want to edit that amount accordingly.] If you really have a sweet tooth, you can add a tablespoon or less for brown sugar here, but I just like the filling to be as is. 

Mix all the other ingredients in a bowl. It's easiest to just mush it up with your hands. There shouldn't be any really dry parts when you're done.

Crumble over the top of each ramekin. To get the peaches really bubbling, try to create a seal over the top of the fruit.  Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes. The topping should be a nice golden brown by then.

Wait a few minutes for it to cool slightly (and so you don't look like a total glutton because you grab food out of the oven and shove it down your throat -- again, maybe that's just me), and then EAT, man. With a cup of black tea. It'll survive waiting overnight and being reheated, but you're not doing anyone any favors by waiting more than a few minutes.

Variations

• You can use a glass baking dish if you want to just make one normal-sized cobbler; bake for about 45-60 minutes in that case, and add a few tablespoons of water. 

• Most other fruits are bound to work well -- combinations of them, too. I've successfully used apples, raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries. 
• If you're using apples, increase the amount of water to about 1/4 cup if filling an 8x8 baking dish, and probably add some sugar -- I put in 1/3 cup for a full 8x8 dish. For the berries, no extra sugar is necessary in the filling, and very little water, if any.
• If using strawberries, 3 teaspoons of brown sugar and 2 teaspoons of flour is all you need to add to the filling. No water.
• If using blueberries, definitely don't add water. About 3 teaspoons each of white sugar and flour works pretty well.