My husband is a born and raised Southern man, so that naturally in his eyes that means you can cobbler all things and the muscadine is its own food group. Being raised in distant land of the Northeastern US I had no clue what a muscadine was or what exactly I was missing. My adventure started on a toasty Florida afternoon when a nearby farm and vineyard began their "you-pick" grape event, so I strapped on my sneaks and encountered a wonderful hidden gem in North Florida.
This farm and mill, Conagree and Penn, boasts all kinds of fresh fare. Including vineyards, orchards, rice paddies, honey bees, and this time of year, pumpkins. I was blown away by the friendliness, passion, and knowledge of the staff on hand as I showed up totally clueless about the farm and what I was about to pick. Truth be told I was just killing time.
Muscadines are native to the southeastern United States, even growing wild in areas. They are known to survive the heat and humidity of the south making them a suitable product of such unsuitable conditions. These grapes are thicker skinned than most others and very sweet, some pretty good qualities I would say.
I may have gone a little overboard, skimming the vines carefully to fill up two medium baskets with roughly five pounds of a grape I had never tasted before. But they went fast, after teaching my kids how to punch out seeds they made quick work of them. I had plans to do a syrup as well as the cobbler but my two little vultures had different plans as they walked around with purple fingers for several days before I found time.
So I set out on the arduous task of punching the seeds out and entire basket of grapes. I found the easiest and most effective way to do this was using a hard reusable straw to push them out. This process took the longest and I was sticky up to my elbows when I was done.
There were some causalities, of course. The grapes would, at times, completely force their way out of the skin as I was trying to remove the seeds but as I got a good rhythm things moved more smoothly.
I tossed the now seedless grapes and a couple cinnamon sticks into a sauce pan and covered them with water. Putting the heat on medium I let them simmer, noticing that their color began to change from a deep maroon-purple color to a lighter red, and even to a nearly white color. I let them cook for about 30 minutes, stirring regularly to evenly disperse them and keep anything from burning.
Afterwards I drained the water from the pan and proceed to absolutely destroy them. Using a series of tools, a potato masher, a whisk, a fork, I poked, prodded, mashed, and smashed my way into this pot of pulp. Stirring and moving the pulp carefully I was able to remove a few stubborn seeds that decided to hang around.
Then returning to a low heat I added my sugar, cornstarch, and vanilla extract and stirred and pulverized even more. I must say, making a homemade cobbler is one heck of a way to relieve some tension. after about five minutes the sugar was completely dissolved so I took the pot of the burner and set it aside, allowing it to cool and thicken.
Using the remainder of my ingredients I put together my topping while the grape filling was cooling. I started by sending my butter to the microwave to soften because I will never be properly prepared with softened butter. Then I added the sugar, cinnamon, oats, and Bisquick. Trade secret: I set a little extra Bisquick aside that I sprinkle over the topping before putting it in the oven. I feel this helps create that nice crisp topping.
After preparing and layering my filling with my topping I popped it into a preheated oven set to 375 and allowed it to cook for 25 minutes, before turning on the boiler for only five minutes to give the crust more crisp. My house smelled absolutely glorious, a cinnamon like sweetness wafted into every corner of our home and left everyone pestering me about when it would be done.
What must have seemed like an eternity to my family eventually passed and they devoured the entire cobbler in one evening. I was so pleasantly surprised with the flavor of this cobbler, it was more perfect than I could have thought it would be and it has now become our favorite fruit cobbler.
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