Best Summer Blueberry-Cherry Cobbler

When it comes to a fruit pie, nothing beats the aesthetic appeal of a pretty pie pan and a fancy lattice crust.  I’m always a little proud of my lovelier pies, but they’re a lot of work!  Besides the fruit prep there’s all that mixing and chilling and rolling and cutting and weaving and crimping that goes into the crust-making, and that’s before you even get to the baking!

But a cobbler?  No, the creation of a good fruit cobbler usually looks something like this:

Dump the fruit.  

Mix the batter.  

Dump the batter on the fruit.  

Bake it.  

And there you go.  Does homemade get any easier than that?

Now I will admit that in most cobblers you are sacrificing beauty for ease, but I can handle UGLY just fine so long as awesome flavor is intact!

And, trust me, there is LOADS of awesome flavor in this cobbler!

Originally, this recipe called for blueberries only.  I love all things blueberry, but one day it just so happened I only had about half the blueberries I needed to make this cobbler and about an equal number of fresh cherries.  Obviously it was time to bring two of my favorite flavors together into one cobbler.  And I was DELIGHTED with the results!

So here it is…

Best Summer Blueberry-Cherry Cobbler

1 1/2 cups, plus 3 T sugar
3 eggs
1 1/4 sticks melted butter, plus 2 T softened
1 cup milk
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp lemon zest
1 1/2 T baking powder
1/4 tsp cinnamon
2 cups fresh blueberries
2 cups fresh pitted cherries, halved or roughly chopped


Preheat your oven to 325°.  Grease the sides and bottom of a 9 x 13-inch pan with the 2 T. softened butter.  Sprinkle that evenly with the 3 T. sugar.


In a large bowl, whisk together the melted butter and sugar.  Add the eggs, whisking until light and fluffy.  Add milk and whisk until combined.  Add flour, lemon zest, baking powder, and cinnamon, whisking until smooth.


Spread the berries in the prepared pan.  Pour the batter over the berries and bake for 1 hour or until the top is golden brown and the center is set.  Unless you like mush, (and it’s okay if you do!) allow cobbler to cool 15-20 minutes on a wire rack before serving.

*Now let me say here that fresh cherries are probably not the easiest fruit to cook with!  Cherries have pits, of course, and they have to be removed.  (I mean, surely you knew that, but just in case there’s somebody out there who has never bitten into a fresh cherry…)  You can use the pitting method shown here, or just do what I do, slicing each cherry vertically from the core and in a circle, then twisting the halves apart and popping the seed out with a fingernail.  Personally, I can pit cherries that way as quickly as any other method I’ve tried.  For me the extra time and effort, (and even the unsightly red-stained fingers,) are well worth it.

**But if you’re not up for cherry-pitting or cherries aren’t your favorite, plenty of other fruits would pair well with the blueberries in this recipe.  Chopped peaches or apples would be my first choice, but strawberries, blackberries, or raspberries would be delicious as well.

***And, yes, technically you could use canned fruit if it was well-drained, but, good heavens, why would you want to?  Frozen would be better than canned, but trust me here and go with fresh fruit if there’s any way in the world you can find it in your budget to do so.  You’ll thank me for it later.  Really.

You know why I like cobblers?  They may not always be pretty, but they’re oh-so-easy while tasting like they took some pretty impressive effort.  And this is, hands down, the most impressive cobbler I’ve ever made and maybe the best I’ve ever eaten.

So forget the pretty pie pan and save the fancy lattice crust work for the holidays.  Take advantage of fresh summer fruits while indulging your summer laziness — whip up a simple cobbler today!