The Joys of Cobbler
Plus: My recent piece on Chris Llewellyn’s solo album, some thoughts on The Odyssey, and family updates
I tried to make an apple cake, and it went poorly. I had everything I needed: some time to myself, Jurgen Krauss’s delightful new cookbook, ripe Granny Smith apples, and a clean kitchen. But the cake ended up tasting like a loaf of bread! It was dense and chewy. I still ate it—I like bread. But it didn’t taste the way a cake should. Evan theorized that I overmixed the flour and generated too much gluten. Cakes might be too advanced for this point in my baking journey.
With a neighborhood dessert club quickly approaching, I decided to rely on some of God’s greatest gifts: fruit, butter, sugar, and heat. Cobbler isn’t fussy. It has a lot of grace to give. If you accidentally put in too little sugar, it’s still delicious. Gooey, melted berries are pretty much always great. You can’t overmix it. You don’t even have to measure exact amounts for the dough that goes on top. It’s just there to get crispy and taste buttery.
There is one critical component for this kind of improvised cobbler to work, though: To really sell it, you must have cute little ramekins to bake them in. Ladies, at least, love having their own small tins of cobbler. It feels refined. It’s fun to hold. There’s also a good proportion of crispy edges that way. It’s just a treat.
I used a box of blueberries and two nectarines. (Believe it or not, this was the second time this year that we Wilts have attempted to buy peaches and instead brought home nectarines. The first time was shopper error, but this time, it falsely said “peaches” on the label stickers!)
I washed the fruit, threw the blueberries in a bowl with a few shakes of granulated sugar, and then chopped the nectarines into small chunks and added them to the bowl. In a separate bowl, I used equal parts of rolled oats and all-purpose flour for the dough (maybe a cup each? I added ingredients until it tasted good) and then mixed it with something like a stick of softened butter, a cup of brown sugar, and a splash of vanilla. Then I poured the fruit into six ramekins and put the dough on top. I baked them at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes. Yum. The second time I made these, I also sprinkled a bit of sugar on top to crystallize, which was kind of fun.
I think it was a success—I liked eating it, at least. But I enjoy most sweets regardless of quality, so I’m not the best person to ask.
Until I become more skilled with baking, this will be a go-to dessert recipe for me. (It might remain so, even after I get better at making cakes. It’s just so reliable!)
An Interview With Rend Collective’s Chris Llewellyn
I came back from maternity leave a couple weeks early to write about Chris Llewellyn’s solo album, Honest. I’ve loved Rend Collective for years (I may or may not have gone to their concerts for two of my teenage birthdays). It was great to chat with him about his new work, which deals with doubt, suffering, and failures within the evangelical church. You can read my piece about it here.
My favorite song on the record is “Mother’s House,” but the most gorgeous lines of the album come in the bridge of “Can You Be Trusted?” Llewellyn captures the desperate, pained hopefulness of waiting for Christ to make all things new: “I’ll join the chorus of the dawn, singing of the light before it comes. Let daylight break to the sound of grace. Singing hallelujah ‘til it hurts, even as the darkness roams the earth—let daylight break.”
What I’m Reading
So much Frog and Toad. Lewis loves those stories, especially the one about cookies.
I’m also almost done with Robert Fagles’s translation of The Odyssey. I probably should’ve read this in high school, but we studied The Iliad then (I do not remember much of it except some grisly depictions of war), and we didn’t get to this one.
I’ve most appreciated the fact that in nearly every scene of The Odyssey, people are feasting. Some of this feasting is immoral thievery, but much of it is simply good hosting as expected by the gods. For all the talk of Odysseus being the man of sorrows—and setting aside the deaths of his companions—his journey home sometimes sounds very pleasant. (I am missing the point, I know.)
My two favorite lines: Nausicaa, a princess, is described as being “too shy to touch on her hopes for marriage, young warm hopes, in her father’s presence.” Young warm hopes! How lovely. The other best line thus far comes when Odysseus’s wife Penelope is praying for him to return and cut down the men who are wreaking havoc on their estate. “At her last words Telemachus shook with a lusty sneeze like a thunderclap resounding up and down the halls.” Her prayer, Penelope says, has been sealed with a sneeze. (Why do men enjoy sneezing so loudly?)
A Good Sermon
I enjoyed this sermon from Redemption Hill Church’s Eric McPherson about vocation. He makes the point that Adam first identifies Eve for her likeness with him and her creation in the image of God, but after the fall, he identifies her for what she does or produces. That’s a warped, sinful way to view other people, and it’s particularly common in Washington, D.C.!
Around the House
Mister Lewis has discovered the “little guitar” (ukulele) that I had been hiding from him. He loves strumming it, but he loves most of all when one of us sits next to him with the big guitar and we play at the same time, a duet of chaos. “More loud!” he instructs us. He’s also entered an energetic jumping and climbing phase.
Zoe Joy, meanwhile, has discovered smiling and cooing. She still spends most of the day sleeping and eating, but she has a lot more awake time now that she’s two months old. She occasionally cries for our attention so she can smile and be happy at us. She’s also realized she has hands, and she is working on controlling them. She’s getting bigger, growing more rolls and precious chunky croissant legs.
Evan has started his third year of law school, diving into incredibly fun courses about income taxation and such. And I’ve been working through a business statistics class before I fully return to work. I’ve avoided this course requirement for five years, and it’s actually not that bad? (I’m on track to maybe finish college… in a decade.)
Grizzled old chihuahua Skippy Jon Jones has been enjoying the bigger house we recently moved into. The day we moved in, he made a mad dash around the neighborhood without anyone noticing he’d left. In the days of his youth, that might have been the last we’d have ever seen of him. But he’s more mature and has a greater awareness of his need for snacks and cozy blankets now. A little while after his sneaky escape, we heard him barking at the door to be let in.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading!