🍎🍏🍁 My Easy Apple Cobbler recipe features a spiced apple filling that is topped with a sweet biscuit topping before being baked to golden brown and bubbly perfection! Finished with salted caramel sauce and a scoop of vanilla ice cream, it’s an EASY dessert everyone loves!
Easiest Apple Cobbler Recipe
Just between you and me, I hate making pies. Sure, I’ve perfected classics like this Best Apple Pie (100% from-scratch crust and filling), but rolling out dough and fussing with lattice toppings? No, thanks.
That’s why I love easy desserts like crisps and cobblers. This homemade apple cobbler is my go-to: spiced apples baked under a biscuit topping, ready in about 15 minutes of prep with just two dirty bowls. I don’t even wait for it to cool. I dig in straight from the pan, topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a spoonful of the spiced, creamy puddle that forms underneath!
Love cobblers?
Don’t miss out on my easy strawberry cobbler and cinnamon-sugar saucy peach cobbler, too! Or, if you prefer a crumblier oat topping, try out my apple crisp instead!
Apple Cobbler Ingredients
It’s dangerously easy to make this simple apple cobbler at a moment’s notice.
Great for last-minute dinner parties and get-togethers, although not so great for my waistline!
Here’s what’s in apple cobbler:
- Apples – I recommend a mixture of tart and sweet apples. My favorite apple combination is Granny Smith apples and Honeycrisp apples. However, any baking apple will work! Think: Braeburn, Cortland, Jonathan, Fuji, and Gala apples. These apple varieties all hold their shape once baked and don’t disintegrate into a grainy mess.
- Lemon juice
- Granulated sugar
- Light brown sugar
- All-purpose flour
- Apple pie spice (a mixture of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and more)
- Salt
- Baking powder
- Egg
- Buttermilk – This recipe was designed and developed using real buttermilk, and you need to use it. You cannot use regular milk or water. If you don’t have any on hand, you can make your own buttermilk with whole milk and vinegar. Add 1/2 cup of 2% or whole milk to a large measuring cup. Stir in 1/2 tablespoon of white vinegar. Let that mixture sit for 2 minutes before using it in the recipe. You can also use powdered buttermilk. You’ll mix however many tablespoons the package calls for, with 1/2 cup of water, to yield 1/2 cup of buttermilk
- Unsalted butter
Note: Scroll down to the recipe card section of the post for the ingredients with amounts included and for more complete directions.
How to Make Apple Cobbler From Scratch
This is such an easy recipe for apple cobbler. The hands-on prep takes just 15 minutes, although you’ll have to plan in advance because the bake time is closer to an hour.
Let’s review the basic steps to making homemade apple cobbler:
Step 1: Prepare the apple filling. Combine the apple slices, both types of sugar, flour, salt, and apple pie spice in a large bowl. Then, turn the apple filling into a 9×13-inch baking dish.
Step 2: Partially bake the apples. Cover the baking dish tightly with foil and pop it into a preheated oven. Since apples are so firm, they need time to soften somewhat before the biscuit topping is added. Meanwhile, make the topping.
Step 3: Make the biscuit topping. You can work in the same mixing bowl that you prepared the filling in. Combine the flour, granulated sugar, baking soda, and salt.
Whisk together the egg and buttermilk and add that to the dry ingredients. Add a few teaspoons of vanilla extract if you’d like, too!
Step 4: Add the cobbler topping. After the apples have baked for 20 minutes, remove the foil. Drop the biscuit dough over the filling and sprinkle it as evenly as possible. Place pats of butter over the dough.
Step 5: Finish baking. The cobbler will need to bake for another 40 minutes. You’ll know it’s ready to come out when the biscuit topping is golden brown and the filling is bubbling around the edges.
Toppings for Apple Cobbler
This spiced apple cobbler is addicting as is, but it tastes even better when topped with vanilla ice cream, a drizzle of caramel sauce, homemade salted caramel sauce, or whipped cream or whipped topping.
I recommend topping individual servings only and not the cobbler that remains in the baking dish, otherwise you won’t be able to save the leftovers.
The Best Apple Cobbler FAQs
Yes, I recommend peeling apples when making scratch apple cobbler. And for that part, most any apple dessert recipe.
The peel doesn’t become tender the same way the flesh of an apple does, which results in an apple cobbler filling that’s partly juicy and tender and partly chewy.
Your apple cobbler filling may be runny if you didn’t use baking apples (which hold their shape after being baked and don’t disintegrate).
OR you forgot to toss the apples in flour.
OR the filling can also turn out runny if you didn’t add enough flour. You need 5 full tablespoons of flour to coat the apples in flour and thicken the filling.
Once the cobbler has been baked, there’s nothing you can do to fix a runny filling. It will still be tasty, it just won’t be the right texture.
I recommend spooning the spiced fruit juices at the bottom of the baking dish over vanilla ice cream and eating it as is.
However, in the future you need to make sure to add flour to the filling to thicken it up.
Yes, you can use cornstarch to thicken the filling of this easy apple cobbler instead of flour.
Just note that cornstarch is twice as strong as flour so you need to use just 2.5 tablespoons of cornstarch as a thickener.
If you’re short on time, you can swap in 10 canned biscuits (one 8-count container refrigerated biscuit dough or two 5-count containers) and bake them over pre-baked apples. However, I highly recommend using my easy homemade biscuit dough for the best results. Canned biscuits cook faster, so adjust the final bake time to about 20–25 minutes.
Yep! It’s fine to leave on your counter (covered with foil or plastic wrap) for up to 2-3 days.
Yes you can. However, if you want to make peach cobbler, blueberry cobbler, or strawberry cobbler, keep in mind that you likely won’t need to prebake those fruits for the 20 minutes or so that you do in this apple cobbler recipe since they’re all much softer fruits to begin with. I would bake them for about 5-10 minutes covered, then add the biscuit topping and bake as directed in this recipe.
You likely won’t want to use apple pie spice either and I’d simply use a bit of cinnamon and pinch of nutmeg for the other fruits, or as you like.
Easy Apple Cobbler
Equipment
- 2 Mixing Bowls
Ingredients
- 8 to 10 apples, peeled, cored, and sliced thinly* (a variety of tart and sweet)
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 2 ¼ cups granulated sugar, divided
- ¾ cup light brown sugar, packed
- 5 tablespoons + 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour. divided
- 1 ½ teaspoons apple pie spice
- 1 ¼ teaspoons salt, divided
- 1 large egg
- ½ cup buttermilk**
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ cup unsalted butter, sliced into about 8 pats of butter
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375F and spray a 9×13-inch baking pan very well with cooking spray; set aside.
- To a large bowl, add the apples and lemon juice. Tip – The lemon juice helps prevent the apples from oxidizing (turning brown) while you're peeling, coring, and slicing them. Feel free to add it to about half the apples (4 or 5) or so, while you're working on getting the remaining 4 or 5 prepped.
- Evenly sprinkle the apples with 3/4 cup granulated sugar (reserve the rest), all the light brown sugar, 5 tablespoons flour (reserve the rest), apple pie spice, 1/4 teaspoon salt (reserve the rest), and toss very well with a rubber spatula to combine and coat evenly.
- Using that same rubber spatula, turn the apples and all the remaining sugary juices out into the prepared baking pan.
- Cover with foil and bake for 20 minutes. While baking, move onto the next steps in the process.
- To a large bowl (Tip – the same bowl you used for the apples is fine provided you scraped out the sugar juices well with your spatula, you can simply wipe it out well with a paper towel and don't need to wash it) add the egg, buttermilk**, and whisk well to combine; set aside.
- In a separate large bowl, add the remaining 2 1/2 cups flour, the remaining 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar, baking powder, and remaining 1 teaspoon salt.
- Pour the wet egg-buttermilk mixture into the dry mixture.
- Using a pastry blender, cut the dough until you have pea-sized pieces.
- After the apples have been baking for 20 minutes, remove the pan from the oven, and evenly spoon the dough over the top.
- Evenly place the pats of butter over the top of the dough.
- Return the pan to the oven, and bake uncovered this time for about 40 minutes, or until the dough is set, lightly golden browned, and you can see the apple mixture below bubbling.
- Allow the cobbler to cool for about 10 minutes, or as desired. Serve with vanilla ice cream, homemade whipped cream, whipped topping (Cool Whip), salted caramel sauce, or your favorite topping, as desired.
- Storage – Extra cobbler will keep airtight at room temp for up to 3-4 days, noting the top will become soggier as time passes. Alternatively, you can store airtight in the fridge for up to 5 days, although if planning on consuming it all in the first few days, then I don't like storing pastry-based desserts like this in the fridge. I personally don't like freezing desserts of this nature either due to the texture changes, although the taste will be fine, stored airtight in the freezer for up to 3 months.
Notes
- Make your own buttermilk with whole milk and vinegar. Add 1/2 cup of 2% or whole milk to a large measuring cup. Stir in 1/2 tablespoon of white vinegar. Let that mixture sit for 2 minutes before using in the recipe.
- You can use powdered buttermilk. You’ll mix how many ever tablespoons the package calls for, with 1/2 cup of water, to yield 1/2 cup of buttermilk. For those who bake with or use buttermilk semi-frequently, but not so frequently to keep in in your fridge, keeping a tub of powdered buttermilk in your pantry is very handy.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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I am wondering if I can use mixed frozen berries with the cobbler part of the recipe?
I have a birthday coming up and know HE loves
berries.
Thanks so much
It’s probably fine to use some berries with the apples. They could be more juicy than apples so the dessert may not set up quite as firm but I haven’t tried using them so can’t say for sure.