Adventures in Gluten Free Cooking: Peach Cobbler

I have a confession. 
I make up recipes...
I make up recipes and test them out on  serve them to our friends.
You see, Daniel and I love cooking. And it is even more fun to cook for other people! In our gluten free adventure I have started to be much more confident and comfortable in my ability to take a 'regular' recipe and adapt it to be gluten free. 
This is what I did the other night when we had some friends over. You may remember that my hubby only really loves a few desserts. Peach cobbler is one of them. He has been a little under the weather this week so I wanted to make a dessert he would enjoy. Last summer we spent a super fun day picking peaches in Michigan. We sliced and froze a good number of the peaches, so making peach cobbler is pretty quick and easy! I looked at a few different peach cobbler recipes to get an idea of dry to wet ingredient ratio, and the went from there adding and changing to make the recipe gluten free and a bit healthier that some of the recipes I found (many of them had 1/2 c melted butter and 1 or more cups of sugar, yikes!) 

Ingredients: 

Peach Filling:

4 cups of sliced peaches

1/4 c sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 c water

2 T corn starch

Topping (batter):

1/2 c white rice flour

1/2 c tapioca starch

1/4 c potato starch

1/2 c brown sugar

1/4 c turbinado sugar or white sugar

1 Tbsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp xanthan gum

1 egg

2/3 c  milk

1/2 c apple butter*

3 Tbsp butter (melted)

1 tsp vanilla

* Apple butter - we LOVE this stuff. Daniel's grandparents supply us with amazing, real, homemade apple butter from West Virginia. We are talking, REAL apple butter. Made in a copper pot over a fire and cooked for a long time (Daniel says they cook it for years...but I think he is exaggerating). We ration it. We make those jars last as long as possible. I dont know exactly what is in our apple butter, but it is soooo yummy, and a little spicy. 

If you don't have apple butter on hand, you can use apple sauce and add some cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and ginger (like 1/4 tsp or less of each spice). Or you could try to make your own. The reason I used the apple butter was to cut down on the real butter in the recipe and still have a moist cobbler. And I like the spices in the apple butter. OK, enough about apple butter, on to the recipe. 

Get whatever kind of peaches you are using ready. I had to thaw mine. You can cut up fresh peaches. You can use canned peaches. Just get your peaches ready.

Mix all of the dry topping ingredients of the cobbler first (I was in a bit of a rush since we were having guests over and did not get lots of pictures - sorry!). Add the wet topping ingredients and stir. The batter will be runny, almost like thick pancake batter. 

Next get the peaches ready. I like to mix the corn starch and water first (makes less corn starch lumps!) and then add it to the peaches, cinnamon, and sugar. 

Pour peaches into a baking pan. I used a glass 2 qt. baking dish.

Pour the batter over the peaches.

Bake at 350 degrees for 45 - 55 min until the topping is set.

My hubby and I have very different ways of eating our peach cobbler. I just scoop my out while it is hot. He likes to pour milk over his cobbler (I am told it is a southern thing). Ice cream would also be a great topping for the gluten free dessert. 

How do you eat your cobbler?