Good Eating Monday: Frozen Fruit Cobbler!

After Zumba this morning, I worked outside a bit. The weather is warm, but not humid, which makes it fairly nice. I finished putting in some edging and planted a few mums and a Coral Bell (Heuchera)  plant we purchased at Walmart last weekend. 
I picked out the late 2 light pink mums and one lavender to add to the area under my kitchen bay window along the walkway.

In Florida, mums will bloom twice: once in spring, then again in late fall/early winter.

Today's Good Eating recipe is a Pinterest recipe for "Frozen Fruit Cobbler."

It only calls for just 3 ingredients: 

frozen fruit, a box of cake mix and one can of 7-up, Spite or other similar soda.
However---and this was a big however--the recipe called for just dumping two bags of unthawed frozen berries or other frozen fruit into the pan, but I found out it might be better to thaw the frozen fruit first, if you don't want an excessive cooking time.
I think if you used just berries, like strawberries or blackberries, using them still frozen might cook quickly enough, but I used 2 bags of big thick frozen peach slices, which are much denser then berries! 

So baking my frozen peach cobbler took 90 minutes just to get to a nice brown crust and it took that long because the oven had to thaw the frozen fruit before it could start baking the crust.

If I did it again--I'd thaw the frozen peaches. I'd probably thaw any frozen fruit just to reduce the oven cooking time. I mean, why make your oven work that hard?
And really, I don't know what the point of the soda is. You probably you just use water.

But this cobbler is delicious! And definitely worth making--I'd just thaw the fruit.

3 Ingredient Frozen Fruit Cobbler
Ingredients:

2 bags of frozen berries or other fruit

1 box of white or yellow cake mix

1 can of Spite or 7-Up or Mist, reg or diet as you prefer.
(1 can= 1 1/2 cups of liquid)

Directions:

Spray a 9 x 13 baking pan with oil cooking spray. Add bags of frozen fruit directly to pan & spread out. (If you want your cobbler to cook more quickly, thaw the fruit, but add all the fruit with any liquid in the bag to the pan. If you use frozen peaches, definitely thaw!)  Sprinkle the cake mix evenly over the top of the fruit. Then drizzle with soda. Do not stir.

Put pan directly into 350 degree oven & bake until crust is a nice  brown, about 35 minutes to 60 minutes.

(Time will depend on whether your fruit is frozen solid or thawed.)     

What this bloggers final product looked like once baked.

One thing you'll notice in the above photo is the "dry spots" of cake mix on top. Yeah, it does that and I didn't like it. So, just before the last 20 minutes of baking time, I dotted my cobbler crust with dabs of light butter, about 1 1/2 Tablespoons worth, particularly on any dry spots and that did help.  I'm thinking maybe a slight bit more soda or at least water added at the beginning, like 1/4 cup, might help reduce this problem.

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One of the guys at the Bible Study on Tuesday, who loved this cobbler, asked if chocolate cake mix might be used? I said, "I think you'd just have to use a fruit that goes with chocolate--like frozen strawberries or cherries."

That sounds like such a good idea, I'm thinking of trying it out this coming Sunday!

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Eat up, me hearties, yo-ho!