How to Ruin a Peach Cobbler

Iain Bagwell; Prop Styling: Mindi Shapiro Levine; Food Styling: Torie Cox

The whole point of a peach cobbler is that it's easy to make. It's essentially just baked fruit with a pastry or biscuit topping. It doesn't require the perfection of a pie—there's no crust to fool with—and it's meant to be thrown together in a hurry, assuming you have too many peaches and not enough time to eat them. But no matter what recipe you go with (we've even listed a few of our favorites below), it's easy to ruin a good peach cobbler if you put your mind to it. Beware of these common cobbler mistakes and you'll be just fine.

Mistake: Choosing unripe peaches

Some things shouldn't be rushed, and a peach cobbler is one of them. If you don't have ripe, juicy peaches, wait until you can find them – or just let yours ripen in a windowsill.

Mistake: Cheating with canned peaches

If you live in the South and it's the middle of summer, there's just no excuse for using canned peaches instead of fresh ones.

Mistake: Overdoing it with sugar

A good cobbler should get most of its sweetness from the fruit, not the filling. You don't need to kill the dish with sugar, so avoid recipes that call for half a cup or more. If it's not quite sweet enough for your taste, you can always add a scoop of ice cream to the rest.

Mistake: Using too much batter

You don't need to cover the peaches completely with batter. Nobody wants a cobbler that's too bready.

Mistake: Serving too soon

We know, it's hard to resist slicing into your peach creation the minute it comes out of the oven. Again, patience. You need to let the cobbler cool and let the syrup thicken. It'll be worth the wait.

Greg Dupree

Mistake: Making it a day ahead

Peach cobbler isn't the kind of dessert that you can just reheat the next day without it getting soggy. Cobblers contain a lot of moisture, so if you want to make one ahead, prep and store the filling and topping separately in the refrigerator and then bake off the cobbler when ready to serve. You might have to add a couple extra minutes to the bake time since you are baking it from cold, but a few extra minutes beats mushy cobbler any day.

Mistake: Cutting the peaches too large

You don't need fancy knife skills to make a cobbler, but the peach slices do need to be relatively the same size. Aim for slices ¼-½ inch thick so that they get nice and jammy while baking. Thicker slices won't bake completely through and might remain slightly crunchy by the time the cobbler is golden brown.

Mistake: Forgetting the acid

This mistake goes hand and hand with too much sugar. A touch of acid, like a tablespoon of lemon juice, helps balance the sweetness of the filling. Without it, your cobbler might taste too sweet.

Mistake: Baking at too high of a temperature

Cobblers need enough time in the oven for the topping to cook through and brown, but at too high a temperature, anything above 375 ℉, the fruit filling might not be cooked by the time the top is burnt.