"one bowl" news and stories

I am not a pie person. I enjoy eating them, but I find the process of making crust, rolling it out and getting it into the pan more bother than I can really deal with. However, I happily embrace all varieties of crisps and cobblers because they are hugely easy and are a wonderful way to use all that great summer fruit.

Yesterday, I made the easiest cobbler ever. It requires just one bowl, one measuring cup and a baking pan. Butter your favorite baking pan and set it aside. Pour five or six cups of blueberries into a medium-sized mixing bowl and add a few cubed nectarines (not required, but very tasty). Sprinkle cornstarch, sugar, cinnamon and grated nutmeg over fruit and squeeze half a lemon in. Stir to combine and pour into the baking pan. Use the same bowl to mix up the biscuit-style topping (recipe after the jump) and spoon it over the top.

I took it to a cookout last night and it was the perfect finish to a meal of hamburgers, potato salad, grilled corn and fresh, garden squash.

This particular type of chocolate cake has many, many names: wacky cake, dump-it cake, one-pan cake, one-bowl cake, eggless cakes, easy chocolate cakes, vinegar cake. Though the ingredients vary from cake to cake, the concept is the same because all the recipes are for cakes made entirely in one bowl or even mixed directly in the pan. This means that it takes next to no time to prepare them and the cleanup is even less than it is for a cake mix - not to mention that you get a homemade chocolate cake in about an hour!

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's food section rounded up a group of bakers and put six one-bowl chocolate cake recipes to the test, including cakes from Martha Stewart and Nigella Lawson. The bakers had the same complaints about Nigella's recipe that I have had in the past, namely that her instructions aren't very clear and if you don't already know what you're doing, your cake can come out terribly. Martha's cake, which did use eggs, tasted great and the panel also loved a classic "crazy cake" recipe, which calls for vinegar and no eggs. The full results and winning recipes can be found here, and are a must-read for any baker or chocolate cake lover.

[Image Post Gazette]

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