![Flag Cake](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2021/05/29/dining/em-icebox-cake-copy/em-icebox-cake-mediumThreeByTwo440.jpg?width=1280&quality=75&auto=webp)
Flag Cake
Erin Jeanne McDowell
1285 ratings with an average rating of 4 out of 5 stars
1,285
45 minutes, plus overnight chilling
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Pour sugar over strawberries and mix well. Set aside and let macerate for 20 minutes.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put butter in a 9-by-13-inch ovenproof serving dish, and place in the oven to melt.
Mix together flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl, and stir in milk and sugar to make a batter.
Remove dish with melted butter from the oven, and pour in the batter.
Arrange drained strawberries over the batter in a single layer, then drizzle the juices from the berries on top.
Return the dish to the oven. Bake until the batter is browned and has risen up and around the fruit, approximately 45 minutes.
Meanwhile, make the blueberry sauce. Rinse and pick over blueberries. Combine water and sugar in a saucepan, and heat to the boiling point. Place 1 pint of blueberries in the bowl of a food processor. Process, turning the machine on and off about 4 times, until berries are coarsely pureed. Add to sugar syrup with lemon juice, and bring back to a boil. Cook about 2 minutes more. Add remaining pint of whole berries, reserving a few for decoration.
Serve blueberry sauce over the warm cobbler, and top with whipped cream and reserved berries.
Lumpy batter is ok. This a standard cobbler recipe, but is not exactly Southern as my German grandmother from Ohio used a very similar one. Her recipe adds 2x more sugar in the batter (which i adjust to the sweetness of the fruit), 1 tsp. Cinnamon, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, and lemon zest. 2 tsp baking powder. I have subbed in part buttermilk with amazing results. The point is not to combine the fruit with the dough. You get a buttery browned crust around the edges with soft pillowy fruit in the middle.
I clicked on the original 1986 recipe and noticed it called for 2 cups of sliced strawberries instead of the 1 cup called for here. Your instinct to add more fruit is likely spot on.
I think the peaches may have been your problem. A cup of strawberries macerated for 20 minutes lets down way more juice than a cup of peaches macerated for the same amount of time. I would suggest slicing your peaches very thinly, and letting them sit with the sugar over night (think about making jam. )
Sorry Litegal - this was sublime. Followed cobbler recipe exactly - and thought it was very weird that I was pouring smooth batter into a vat of butter. Baked cobbler was kind of spongy but had magnificent buttery flavor. Changed sauce. Looked like jam recipe (make strawberry every June) so used 1/2 jar of homemade jam in food processor with 1/2 pint of blueberries and then put resulting mix into pyrex jar in micro for 1.5 minutes to heat. Served slices and let guests put sauce and cream on top.
To make this dairy-free, I used coconut oil in place of butter, and light canned coconut milk in place of milk. In addition to the blueberry sauce, we topped it with toasted sliced almonds. Very delicious!
So good! I would also add more strawberries next time. Other than that, we all loved it. And super easy. I simplified the blueberry sauce by skipping the food processor and just macerating the blueberries as they cooked.
(con't)Strawberries let down their juice far more quickly than peaches do, especially if the peaches are still firm enough to slice.) Your sugar also needs to dissolve before you drizzle it over the dough -- something that won't happen if the fruit hasn't let down enough juice.
I clicked on the original recipe by fortuitous mistake. It called for 2 cups of sliced strawberries, versus the 1 cup called for here. I'm assuming the correct measure is 2 cups?
One cup of strawberries seemed like way too few. So I did four cups. It was delicious!
I added cinnamon as another reader suggested. The dish was delicious. The cake did not rise as much as I would like. I did use fresh baking powder. I think it had more to do with the size of baking dish. Next time I'll use a little smaller dish so the batter is not as spread out.
I followed this recipe absolutely, turned out great. I took it to a buffet and every bit disappeared in a few minutes.
I, too, was dubious about pouring batter into a pond of melted butter, did it anyway, and the result was terrific.
Next time I might add a little more lemon juice to the blueberry sauce.
The original recipe calls for twice as much fresh fruit as dry ingredients. (Ie, 2 cups of berries or peaches). I don’t know how this got changed.
Troubleshooting here: Was your baking powder still good? Or were you baking at a higher than accustomed altitude without making the necessary adjustments?
It's a bit confusing, but check again, I take it to mean 1/4 cup sugar to macerate and 3/4 cup for batter. Hope that helps. Happy 4th!
This wasn't a recipe created in 1986. My grandmother (born in 1895) made this all the time.
I have a square 9 x 9 x2 metal cake pan. Will it work for this cobbler cake recipe that calls for 9 x 13? I don't want to use my glass one. I saw that someone had used the 9 x9 x 2 metal successfully. Also will the cake rise 2" or over it? In otherwords, do I have to adapt the cape recipe for the 9 x 9? Thxs. Making it for tomorrow.
Use apples and is like Alison’s cobbler recipe
This was such a quick easy dessert. I actually veered off a bit. I had just used up my strawberries making strawberry rhubarb, both fresh from the garden. Worked like a charm, just blopped on the strawberry rhubarb compote with a spoon in about 10 or 12 spots along the top. The sauce seems kind of redundant to me - cobbler with a little vanilla ice cream was just right. Note to self: Use regular butter, not salted, next time. 🤦🏻♀️All that buttery goodness would be better w/o the extra salt.🤦🏻♀️
Oh, and I only had sour milk on hand. For once, that was a good thing!
great recipe! I am going to try to half it using smaller baking pan. MORE CRISPY EDGES ratio!
Just made this (sort of) for July 4. But I used about 4 cups—maybe more, I didn’t measure— of pitted cherries and skipped the blueberry sauce entirely because I didn’t have the bandwidth for it. Also subbed buttermilk for half the milk and added a dash of vanilla to the batter. Served with whipped cream. Very good, and very very easy.
Halved the recipe, but doubled the strawberries. Used 8x8 pan. Put cinnamon in the blueberry sauce. Served with Jeni’s Lemon Blueberry ice cream.
Yuk. Maybe I did something wrong but I’m pretty good at following directions to the letter—mine came out rubbery. Also way too much sauce. Right now I feel sad about the wasted fresh fruit. :(
This is divine and so easy - great for when your fruit is not perfect to eat on it’s own. We have been making a simple peach cobbler for many years - although we cook the peaches if they are hard or mealy in sugar first and then pour on top last. Sometimes we use brown sugar, vanilla, almond extract or cinnamon. How much sugar we add depends on the peaches - of which you can never have too many, IMHO.
Too much sauce— halve recipe for sauce
The original recipe calls for twice as much fresh fruit as dry ingredients. (Ie, 2 cups of berries or peaches). I don’t know how this got changed.
This predates 1986 ... my grandmother made this in the 40s ... it was a common recipe way way back & often called jiffy cobbler
Blueberry sauce was good. Otherwise nothing spectacular
I mis read the instruction and folded most of the melted butter into the batter. It turned out lovely. I also added a 1/2tsp of almond extract and a shake of nutmeg to the batter. Amazing.
Definitely two cups of strawberries. Baked for 40 minutes to perfection. Delicious and so easy for a summer dinner party!
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