This Peach Cobbler Not the Work of a Shoemaker

I�m afraid the expression is quickly dying out, but there was a time when being called a �shoemaker� was the ultimate kitchen insult. It meant that your cooking skills were so weak, the cobbler down the street could have taken a break from resoling wingtips, come into the kitchen, and done just as well.

That little culinary history lesson has absolutely nothing to do with this beautiful peach cobbler, but I�ve been trying to keep the saying alive, and it gave me an excuse to share. Ironically, this recipe is so easy any shoemaker could master it.

I have to thank everyone who chimed in last week when I asked for cobbler recipes and inspiration. I received so many great variations and techniques, and while I didn�t use any one single recipe, I definitely used parts of several.

I hope you don�t have much trouble finding fresh ripe peaches this time of year, but if you can�t, this will still be very nice using canned. Speaking of finding ingredients, one thing I learned from my research was that for whatever reason, self-rising flour was the way to go.

No one could quite explain it, but cook after southern cook report that the self-rising flour performs much better than plain with salt and baking powder added in (see ingr. below). Do you have a theory? Maybe most people�s baking powder is so old it�s not as strong as the leavening in a freshly purchased bag of SR flour? What I do know is how nicely this turned out.

Anyway, I�m going to kick off my shoes, put up my feet, and savor the last of this delicious cobbler. Enjoy!

UPDATE: Reports from people trying this are that the ones made with self-rising flour came out awesome, and the ones using regular flour didn't work well at all. Fair warning! Get some self-rising flour!

Ingredients:
For the peaches:

5-6 cups sliced peaches (if you use canned peaches, do not make the syrup)

1/8 tsp Chinese 5-spice

1 tsp freshly grated lemon zest

1 cup water

1 cups sugar

For the batter:

1 stick (1/2 cup) butter (real butter! Do NOT use margarine!)

1 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups self-rising flour (or 1 1/2 cup AP flour, plus 2 1/2 tsp baking powder and 3/4 tsp salt - NOTE: this does not work as well...get some self-rising flour!)

1 1/2 cups milk