Top That: My 5 Favorite Toppings for Baked Fruit Desserts

It's that time of year again. Time to start the fruit-based desserts for spring! I harvested the first of the rhubarb this morning. We'll mix rhubarb desserts with frozen pear, frozen plum, and frozen cherry desserts until the berries begin in mid to late June.

I thought I'd share my 5 favorite fruit dessert toppings and which fruits we enjoy them most on.

Streusel Crumb Topping

Streusel crumb topping is fine in texture and does best on firm fruits, where it won't fall beneath the surface of fruit. Think apple, pear, apple-blackberry, or apple-raspberry. I used this on a liquidy rhubarb and the crumb topping sunk beneath the surface on half of the individual cups of dessert. 

In addition to fruit crumbles, I use this to top pies, such as rhubarb-custard pie or Dutch apple pie. 

1 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter, softened
pinch salt (optional)

Stir together dry ingredients. Cut in butter. Add a teaspoon of water to moisten. Bake on top of fruit filling until golden brown.

Enough for one fruit pie, a 9 X 12 baking dish of fruit crumble, or 10 individual custard cups of fruit crumble. If not using the full amount, store the remaining crumb topping in the refrigerator up to 3 months.

Crisp Oat Topping

An oat crumb topping works well on juicy fruits, such as stone fruits, berries, apples, pears, and rhubarb for making fruit crisps. The juices of the fruits soften the oats somewhat and add a nice texture.

If using this on apple crisp, 1/2 to 1 teaspoon cinnamon can be added to the crumb mixture. If using on a pear crisp, 1/2 teaspoon ginger can be added to the mixture.

1 cup flour

3/4 cup sugar, can be brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon  salt

1/2 cup shortening, butter, or vegetable oil

1 cup uncooked oats

Combine flour, sugar, and salt. Cut in shortening/butter. Stir in oats. Store in refrigerator in covered container up to 3 months, if not using full amount. For example, individual custard cups of crisp can be made 2 to 4 at a time, reserving remaining topping mix for future desserts.

For a 8 X 8 or 9 X 9 fruit crisp, top 4 cups of sweetened and thickened fruit filling with Crisp Oat Topping mix. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes at 375 degrees F, or until topping is golden.

French Cobbler Topping

What makes this French is an egg-based topping. It's delicious with cherries, raspberries, plums, rhubarb, and apples. This is my most commonly used cobbler topping. It has a cake-like texture, as opposed to a traditional American biscuit texture.

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons butter, softened

1 egg, slightly beaten

Combine dry ingredients. Cut in butter. Stir in egg.

To make a 9 X 9 or 8 X 8 French fruit cobbler:

Combine 4 to 5 cups fruit, sugar to sweeten, pinch, salt, 2 tablespoons flour, and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract  and 1/2 cinnamon if desired. Spoon into buttered baking dish. Dollop fruit with batter above. Bake at 350 degrees F for 35 to 40 minutes, until topping is golden and firm to finger press.

Scone Topping

I love make individual cobblers topped with scone dough. Since scones don't take long to bake, I use this on a pre-cooked fruit filling. Because the scone dough is firm, this works well where fruit may be very liquidy, such as topping rhubarb compote or even leftover rhubarb sauce.

This recipe is actually our family's scone recipe. I found it in an English country cooking cookbook years ago. I make this as plain scones or as bramble scones, adding fresh blackberries and cutting the milk to 2 tablespoons.

3/4 cup flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 tablespoon sugar

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons milk or cream.

Combine dry ingredients. Cut in butter. Stir together with milk/cream until a dough forms, adding a little extra milk, if needed. 

Cut dough into small rounds or wedges (2 large rounds patted out, cut into 4-6 wedges each).

To use Scone Topping, fill a butter 8 X 8 baking dish half full with sweetened and thickened cooked fruit filling. Top with cut scones. Bake at 385 for 15 minutes, until scones are golden and firm. The recipe can be halved for making 4 individual servings in custard cups, or remaining scone dough can be baked as scones on a baking sheet.

Drop Biscuit Topping

This is the topping that I've always known for peach cobbler, using juicy and sweet summer peaches. The recipe comes from my mother. It's how she made peach cobbler. The topping is only sweetened by a sprinkling of sugar over the batter. Topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a serving of this peach cobbler is summer in a bowl. 

2 cups flour

1 Tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 Tablespoons shortening or butter

3/4 cup milk

1 Tablespoon sugar

Combine dry ingredients. Cut in shortening or butter. Stir in milk. Should be a very thick batter.

To male a Drop Biscuit Cobbler, fill 8 X 12 or 7 X 11 buttered baking dish half full with sweetened, uncooked fruit (such as apple or fresh peach) filling. Drop biscuit dough in 8 portions, spaced evenly over the top of the fruit. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 425 degrees F for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 degrees F and continue baking until topping is firm and golden brown, about 20 to 25 minutes. 

If using canned peaches, bake at 425 degrees F for 15 to 20 minutes.

Just some notes:

You can substitute whole wheat flour for part of the all-purpose flour. I usually sub 1/4 whole wheat to 3/4 white, and it's pretty much undetectable. In the French cobbler topping, if I sub some whole wheat, I use brown sugar in place of white. I think the pairing of brown sugar with whole wheat flour is nice. Made that way, this is my favorite topping for blackberry cobbler in the very late summer.

For all of the toppings but the French cobbler topping, you can mix up the dry ingredients plus butter and make just a couple of individual servings in custard cups and store the remaining topping mixture in the fridge for up to 3 months, then make more individual servings another day. I actually prefer the individual custard cup fruit desserts as it helps with portion control, and they bake in less time. The reason the French cobbler topping doesn't work as well doing half now, half another day if it's more troublesome to halve an egg, and you can't keep a fully mixed batter in the fridge for more than a day. (The baking powder will fizzle out once moistened by the egg, and the raw egg should be cooked within a day or two.)

I do both pre-cooked fillings and uncooked fresh or frozen fruits as the fillings. Pre-cooking the filling helps me get the consistency right, while uncooked fruit means I have one less step to take to baking the dessert. Canned fruit, such as canned peaches, can be used in place of fresh with good results.

One last option, if for some reason you don't have a working oven, you're camping, or you want to keep the kitchen cooler, you can make cobblers on the stove, in the way chicken and dumplings are made. This is called a grunt. Cook the filling in a dutch oven or cast iron skillet. Once the filling is cooked and bubbling, drop biscuit dough (the French cobbler batter, drop biscuit batter, or scone dough batter thinned just slightly with extra milk or cream so that it will "drop") onto the fruit. Cover the pot or pan and allow the biscuit dough to steam over low to medium flame. The dumplings should be puffed and firm in about 15 minutes. The most traditional grunt is made with blueberries, although plums, cherries, peaches, apples, rhubarb, or blackberries also make good grunts. 

Happy baking, friends!