A couple months back, I was invited to participate in a potluck dinner here at work. I provided two dishes, a duck concoction that was okay, but not great, and an apple cobbler.

The apple cobbler was the big hit, so I thought I’d provide the recipe.

The base recipe is here; it’s a simple-to-make drop-dough cobbler. But when I made it for the first time, the apple/ginger pairing just spoke to me. I thought it was far more delicious than apples and cinnamon, so I modified the recipe.

Ginger Apple Cobbler

This recipe will make one 9×9 or 8×11 baking dish worth of cobbler.

FOR THE FILLING:

6 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and diced
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch of salt
Pinch of ground nutmeg

FOR THE TOPPING:

2 tablespoons butter, soft
1/2 cup self-rising flour
1/2 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
Pinch of ground ginger
1 egg

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Butter the baking dish.

Mix the apples, sugar, brown sugar, AP flour, vanilla extract, ginger, cinnamon, salt and nutmeg. You can mix them directly in the baking dish. The resulting mixture should taste sweet, tart and gingery.

When making the topping, you can use a hand mixer or your food processor if it has a dough blade. Put one egg in the bowl and beat it well. Add the butter, sugar, flour, salt and ginger and beat until smooth.

Taste the topping. It should be delicious and you should be tempted to just eat it right out of the bowl. If not, you did something wrong.

Spoon up some topping and dollop it on top of the filling. You want to get the dollops as even as you can, though it doesn’t have to be perfect. The topping will spread as it bakes. It will also absorb moisture from the filling, which is why you don’t have to put a lot of liquid in it.

Bake for about thirty minutes. When the topping is light brown and firm, remove it from the oven. Let it cool thoroughly before serving or you will burn your tongue off.

Enjoy with vanilla ice cream.

I tripled this recipe for the potluck and served it in one of those big catering pans. Like I said, it was a huge hit.