Apple Betty is a style of baked fruit dessert, having alternating layers of buttered bread crumbs and spiced, sweetened fruit. Apples are by far and away the most common fruit used. You will often see it called “Apple Brown Betty” (“brown” coming from the brown sugar used.) Some people make their topping out of flour…
Baked Fruit Desserts
Buckle
Buckle is a thick-batter cake with fruit (usually blueberries) and a crumble topping on it. Some recipes will have you put the fruit on top of the batter, some will have you stir in into the batter. In either case, as the batter bakes and rises, the fruit sinks into it, but depressions remain in…
Cobbler
A cobbler is a deep, oven-proof dish with a filling topped with a thick biscuit dough topping and baked in an oven. The filling is usually sweet, and usually fruit, but sometimes savoury fillings are used to make it a main course instead of a dessert. If the cobbler is a dessert, the topping is…
Crumble
A crumble is a spiced flour, sugar and butter mixture that is “crumbled” over top a filling before baking. The filling is usually fruit. There are also savoury crumbles. If you are looking for the difference between a crumble and a cobbler, the topping for a crumble is kind of a “shortbread” one, with butter…
Fruit Pies
Fruit pies are very easy to make. There’s really just one set of general principles to learn, and then you can do thousands of variations on those few general principles.
Pandowdy
Prepared as for a cobbler, but before the baking is finished, you take a spoon to break up the top crust and push pieces of it down into the fruit. This is what was called “dowdying.” Most recipes are for Apple Pandowdy, but you will also from time to time come across recipes using blueberries…
Slumps
Slumps is baked fruit, usually apples, that are stewed and topped with a dumpling. Language Notes Called “grunts” in Massachusetts.