With both Ricca and I being foodies and creating a cookbook, it’s not always easy to stick with our weightloss plan. We try to limit ourselves to one cheat meal a week, usually reserved for Saturday, the hardest day to eat healthy for us! When it seems like one cheat meal is just not going to work out, we at least try to lighten up the second cheat meal.
A week prior to me making these cobblers, a friend invited us over for a home cooked Ghanaian dinner. This was going to be on Sunday, not Saturday, so see where I am going with this? Ricca and I started off the week by meal planning, this time putting our cheat meal on Sunday where we also decided to make a tasty and rich dessert. However, with a busy Saturday out of town, we both cheated with takeout!
With that said, scratch the indulgent dessert idea and back to the drawing board. I thought, we can’t punish our friend and make it taste too healthy. So what do we bring? It was the end of Summer, beginning of Fall, so I merged the two seasons flavors and decided on personal cobblers that cut down on the the sugar and butter and were portion controlled. Normally, our cobblers call for a little more sugar and adding butter to the filling, but you won't see that here.
Dinner was amazing! Our friend prepared the perfect home-cooked Ghanaian meal. She made Ghana fried chicken, jollof rice, waakye, shito, and plantains. Everything was absolutely perfect and we can’t even describe how nice it was to have such delicious food prepared especially for us!
The meal itself seemed fairly healthy, but with so much to indulge in, I spared no calories and was thankful to have a healthier dessert to finish the evening. These cobblers are quick and easy, so give them a try! Sub the fruit as you like, the recipe should work with any fruit combo!
Healthy Apple and Berry Cobbler
Serves approximately 6
INGREDIENTS
For the Filling:
1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries
2 large Granny Smith apples (about 3 cups), diced
¼ cup sugar
1 tsp YHV pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cornstarch (omit if using fresh berries)
For the Crumb Topping:
¾ cups flour
1/2 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
1/3 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 tsp YHV pumpkin pie spice
½ tsp cinnamon
1 pinch of salt
INSTRUCTIONS
Pre-prep: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Wash, peel, and dice apples.
For the Crumb Topping:
Add all dry crumb topping ingredients into a separate bowl and whisk until ingredients are combined. Then, using a fork or pastry cutter, incorporate the butter into the dry mixture until it's coarse and crumbly.
For the Filling:
Add all filling ingredients to a medium bowl and stir. Make sure all spices and cornstarch are evenly distributed. Dump the filling into a non-stick baking dish, or individual cobbler dishes and top with crumb.
Bake for 30-45 minutes. The Cobbler is done when apples are tender, but not mushy. Insert a toothpick or knife into the cobbler to check doneness. If the cobbler is not browning to your liking, increase the oven temp to 400 degrees F for the last 5 minutes of baking.
Enjoy, and if you make these at home, please tag us and use the hashtag #vibeyellow
