I've never made a cobbler before. That staple of Southern dessert, so near and dear to my heart, has always been my mother's job. Then today I got bored. Like really, seriously, terminally bored. So I thought, oh, what the heck.

So you're properly prepared for the gravity of the undertaking here, this is my grandmother Ferguson's recipe. She had it from her mother (my great-grandmother Campbell), who baked her peach cobbler in a washtub. So this recipe is no joke at least 110 years old.

Now, we ordinarily make this cobbler with peaches, but we didn't have any peaches in the house. We did have raspberries though, which my mother bought on accident when going for strawberries because she's lazy and doesn't read labels. So I thought, okay, raspberry cobbler. So here we go.

This is a recipe in two parts. First you have to make a pastry, then you use the pastry to make the actual cobbler. So let's begin.

Mandy Campbell's Cobbler

INGREDIENTS:

at least 24 oz of fruit (your choice, needs to be thawed if it's bought frozen)
Sugar
Flour
2/3 cup Crisco shortening or butter for a richer flavor (if you use butter, make sure it's softened before you start!)
Boiling water
3/4 tsp. salt
1 stick of butter (not the same as the above 2/3 cup!)

Note: I deliberately didn't include amounts on flour and sugar. Suffice it to say you better not get started if you don't have a good bit of both. You're also going to want a flour sifter, a rolling pin and a tool called a pastry blender. If you don't have one, you can use knives, but I really suggest the pastry blender.

PREPARATION:

Before beginning, place your fruit in a large bowl. It won't have a lot of juice, especially if it came frozen, so you're going to gently fold in about half a cup or so of sugar using a soft (rubber or silicone) spatula. Set this to the side and let it sit while you're making your pastry.

Also, preheat your oven to 400.

Now roll up your sleeves, and I hope you have a decent amount of counter space. (If not, a good clean tabletop will do, but you'll want to cover it with wax paper before starting; dampen the surface so the wax paper will stick.)

Sift 2 cups of flour into a large mixing bowl. Add the salt, then drop the Crisco or butter on top of this. Use your pastry blender to slowly "cut" the Crisco into the flour-and-salt mix. You want to mix this until it's nice and grainy, kind of crumbly-like. Then you want to start adding the boiling water, about 1/4 to 1/2 of a cup at a time, and mix this up with a fork until it sticks together good. (Mom says "until well blended.") You want to be careful not to get this too wet!!!

Now, using your flour sifter, shake out some flour onto your work surface. (See why I said you wanted wax paper?) Dump the pastry into the middle of the flour. Flour your rolling pin so it doesn't stick to the pastry, flour the top of the pastry so it doesn't stick to the rolling pin, and gently roll the pastry out until it's really thin, maybe like 1/4 inch (6.5 mm for you metric types).

Now you need a regular table knife, preferably without a serrated edge. Stick the blade into the flour (so it doesn't stick!) and start cutting your pastry into one-inch-thick strips. Cover the bottom of a greased 9 inch square baking pan with pastry strips (since it's the bottom, and nobody will see it, use the jaggedy edges).

Now add a layer of your juicy fruit, a layer of pastry, and keep layering like so until you've used all the raspberries and all the pastry, ending with pastry on the top.

Cut small pats of butter and layer all over the top (you probably won't use the whole stick), then sprinkle liberally with sugar. Bake for about 20 minutes or until the top crust is a nice golden-brown.

We like this with vanilla ice cream, especially if you use a tarter fruit like raspberries or blackberries.

The fruit, in the bowl, with the sugar already stirred in. See how it's getting juicy?