How To Make One Sweet Cherry Cobbler

As many of you know, I recently started building Squidoo lenses. Squidoo is a website where anyone can go and build a page, called a lens, about anything that interests them. Squidoo is easy to use, and I have had a lot of fun with my Romantic Valentine’s Day Dinner, Best of the Wurst, Teaching Your Kids to Cook and Coq au Vin lenses. I plan on building more lenses in the future because, as anyone who uses Squidoo can tell you, it can be more than a little addictive!

One of the best aspects of Squidoo is the community of people who use it. I have met many wonderful, helpful and supportive people on Squidoo. One of my favorite new Squidoo friends is Chef Achim Thiemermann, or “Chef Keem.”

Chef Keem has been a lensmaster for a little over a year and already has published over 100 lenses! Apart from that, he also sells amazing candies and has a line of flavored agave nectar that he sells on ebay and in Whole Foods in TX, CO, OK and LA. As if all that weren’t enough, he is also the Executive Chef for the Driftwood Lodge in SE Alaska. The man is a dynamo!

I have been fortunate enough to try some of Chef Keem’s products. His Espresso Sea Salt Caramel Truffles are a wonderful treat, but I think the Agasweet, his flavored agave nectar, is so tasty and so versatile that I was inspired to create a recipe with it. This is based on his wife’s recipe for peach cobbler, and I have modified it to work with cherries. So, this one is for my new friend, Squidoo Lensmaster Chef Keem.

Squidoo Cherry Cobbler

For the fruit
About 4 cups of Bing cherries, pitted
1 tablespoon flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon butter
¼ cup Agasweet Almond
¼ cup Agasweet Vanilla
¼ teaspoon mace or nutmeg

Toss cherries with flour. Combine cherries and the rest of the ingredients in a sauce pan. Heat until it just comes to a boil. Turn off the heat and set aside.

Melt ½ stick of butter, and pour into a 9X13” baking pan. Preheat oven to 325°F.

For the batter
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon mace or nutmeg
1 cup whole milk
1/3 cup Agasweet Almond
1/3 cup Agasweet Vanilla
2 oz. butter, melted and cooled
2 oz. vegetable oil

For the optional streusel

Mix together until crumbly:
4 oz. butter
2.5 oz. sugar
2 oz. brown sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
6 oz. all purpose flour
2 oz. toasted and ground almonds

Whisk dry ingredients together very well. Whisk wet ingredients together. Whisk the wet into the dry until you have a relatively smooth batter.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth it out. Evenly pour the fruit mixture on top of the batter, juice and all.

Sprinkle on the optional streusel. Use as much or as little as you’d like. Any leftover streusel mix can be frozen for another time.

Bake in the center of the pre-heated oven until the filling is bubbling and the batter is deep golden brown and set.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

And that is it—my tribute to Chef Keem. I do hope you will try his flavored Agasweet. You can use them to sweeten tea or coffee, but they are also wonderful when used in savory cooking. When you order, Chef Keem will even send you a list of ideas of how to use this great, healthy ingredient.