Southern Peach Cobbler

Name: Southern Peach Cobbler
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients: 1 stick butter (½ cup); 1 cup all-purpose flour; ¾ cup granulated sugar; 1 teaspoon fine sea salt; 1 tablespoon baking powder; 1 cup whole milk; ½ teaspoon vanilla extract; Juice of ½ a lemon; 4 cups ripe yellow peaches, thinly sliced

Family Journey

EstoniaManville, SCMayesville, SC

Sumter, SCColumbia, SC

When Rachel Barnett married her husband Henry in the summer of 2006 in South Carolina, they didn’t serve wedding cake at their reception. They served peach cobbler. “I wanted to recognize his family’s peach farming history,” explains Rachel, who along with Lyssa Kligman Harvey, co-authored “Kugels & Collards: Stories of Food, Family, and Tradition in Jewish South Carolina.”

Henry comes from a line of Jewish farmers in the state that goes back to B.J. Barnett, his great-grandfather, who moved to the U.S. from Estonia in the mid-1800s. As the family settled in South Carolina, they opened rural shops, first selling dry goods and later general merchandise, cotton seed, and fertilizer. They also became farmers, but it wasn’t until 1956 that they planted peach trees. Barnett’s Peaches, in time, became one of the largest peach orchards in South Carolina.

Sadly, Barnett’s Peaches closed in the mid-1990s, but the fruit’s presence in the family has endured. During the summer, when it’s in season, the family enjoys peach cobbler on Edisto Island, just off the South Carolina coast, where they have a vacation home on a deep water creek. Rachel is quick to share credit for the recipe, saying: “It is an old recipe that many folks across the South make in the summer. It's so easy and delicious!”

Sprinkling the sugar over the peaches just before baking is the genius move here: the sugar turns crispy and caramelized in the oven, forming a sort of crackable lid to the cobbler. Serve with ice cream.

Ingredients

Yield: 8 servings

1 stick butter (½ cup)
1 cup all-purpose flour
¾ cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 cup whole milk
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Juice of ½ a lemon
4 cups ripe yellow peaches, thinly sliced

DessertsDairy

Preparation

Step 1

Melt the butter in a 9x13 baking dish. Mix together the flour, ½ cup of the sugar, the salt, baking powder and milk. Pour the batter over the melted butter. Do not stir to combine.

Step 2

Toss the vanilla extract, lemon juice and the peaches together. Add the peaches to the dish, dotting them over the batter and letting them sink in. Sprinkle the remaining ¼ cup of sugar over the peaches.

Step 3

Bake at 350°F, until the crust turns golden and crisp, 35-45 minutes. Remove from the oven, let cool and serve with vanilla ice cream. Leftovers can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

Recipe reprinted with permission from “Kugels & Collards: Stories of Food, Family, and Tradition in Jewish South Carolina" (University of South Carolina Press, 2023).

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