Blackberry and Basil Cobbler

So today, in honor of Labor Day, I decided it was best to have a BBQ as kind of a "Hey come and meet The Pritchard's" party. Being new to our neighborhood, and since we don't know a lot of people I thought it would be a good idea. Also the neighbor lady gave is a bunch of great produce out of her garden, and that, coupled with the stuff from our garden and an insane drive to have people tell me how good a cook I am, it just kinda made since to throw a party.

I think the hit of the night was the blackberry and basil cobbler that I made for dessert. If you know anything about the old Food Doofus, you'll know that I'm no baker. In fact I really don't enjoy it. I am however, fairly good at it, so it's not to hard for me to make something tasty for a meal finisher. I started to look for a good recipe for the cobbler top. I didn't want to have just a crisp top, but I don't like a pie top either. This was going to get tricky. Enter my good friend and pastry chef extraordinaire, Joe Baker. Joe has a blog aptly named Joe the Baker (google it. It's great). Joe also has a really great recipe for classic peach cobbler. I had purchased some peaches and nectarines the other day at the farmer's market in Provo, and had planned on using them, but my daughters' propensity to eat any and all tasty fresh fruit in the house, left me with to few fuzzy fruits to make a proper cobbler. I chose instead to use frozen blackberries from my sisters farm, Miller Farms. 
A funny thing about frozen blackberries, they leak a lot of juice. A lot of juice. About a pint from roughly 1.5 pounds. I had some much juice, that I was able to do all kinds of things with it, but that is another post all together. Back to the cobbler. The filling was sweet and syrupy, and the pastry was GBD, and tender. I paired it with some blackberry whipped cream, which complemented it nicely. It turned out delicious. It was so good, it all got eaten before I remembered to take a picture of it, so you'll have to take my word on it. Here's the recipe, thanks to Joe Baker for the pastry dough formula.

Filling
1.5-2 lbs black berries
1/2 c chiffonade fresh basil
2 t fresh ground black pepper (trust me, it makes the dish)
Honey (enough to sweeten berries)
Cornstarch (enough to coat berries)
Pinch of salt

Pasty (courtesy Joe Baker)
4 oz AP flour
2 oz sugar
1 oz brown sugar
1t baking powder
1t salt
3 oz COLD butter
3 oz heavy cream

Mix the ingredients for the filling together, and fold with a rubber spatula, making sure not to crush the berries. Pour filling into a buttered 8x12 glass baking dish. 

In your food processor, combine all the dry ingredient and the butter. Pulse on high until the consistency of sand. Add cream and pulse until a soft dough forms. In high elevation add more flour, or oats. Break odd small amounts and dot the top of the filling.

Bake in a conventional oven at 370 for about 25 minutes. High elevation, add five minutes.
Convection oven, start in 370 oven with fan on, and drop to 355 when you put the cobbler in. Bake at 355 for 15 minutes, then raise the temp back up to 370 for the remainder of time