Crisps and Crumbles and Cobblers, Oh My!

So you want to incorporate more local, seasonal foods into your diet but plain berries and stone fruits in a bowl just won't cut it? Try making a delicious dessert and before you get confused about all those crazy fruit dessert terms, here's a crash course:

Cobbler - sweetened fruit with a baked biscuit crust either dropped in pieces or spread over the whole surface

Pandowdy - the same idea as a cobbler except midway through baking the crust or biscuit pieces are broken up and pushed into the saucy fruit layer

Grunt, or slump - a steamed fruit dish typically made on the stove top with a dumpling-like pudding incorporated on top

Buckle - a sweet cake with the fruit incorporated right into the batter, topped with a strusel

Crisp - sweet fruit on bottom with a "crumble" topping usually made of butter, flour and/or oats and sometimes nuts, differs from a crumble in that the topping is crunchy; in the UK a crisp is called a crumble

Bird's nest pudding - usually made with cored and sugared apples, surrounded by a crust (like a nest)

Betty, or brown betty - fruit between layers of buttered crumbs; it's a brown betty if you use brown sugar; similar to the French charlotte

Clafouti - fruit is topped with a pudding and then baked

Sonker - deep dish version of a cobbler; popular only in the Carolinas

And lastly, in case you're interested, the difference between a tart and a torte is that a tart is a miniature pie with no topping, baked with a classic pastry crust; a torte often has little to no flour in its crust with more of a ground nut or breadcrump based dough rolled to coat the bottom.

So now you know!