This is an excellent recipe! To the reviewers who said that they had too much liquid after baking or that the crust never rose to the top, YOU USED THE WRONG TYPE OF FLOUR. This recipe calls for self-rising flour, NOT all-purpose, and there is a difference!
I made this as directed, subbing cinnamon for the 5-spice powder (I have simple tastes!) and it turned out wonderfully and was delicious!
A little trick for helping it to set better. After the bake time is over, turn the heat off and let the cobbler remain in the oven for a while to cool. This will let any remaining liquid boil off while not burning the dessert.
You should eat this warm though, rather than room temp. (Just my opinion!)
All in all, this is a great recipe. You can't go wrong with Chef John!
We didn't like the Chinese five spice powder flavor. It was just an off taste to us.
Came out perfect! To the people who do not have self-rising flour: For every 1 cup of all-purpose flour, add 1 1/2 tsp of baking power and 1 tsp of salt. Mix that together and you should have self-rising flour. It worked perfectly for me. Also I did not have Chinese five spice so I substituted it with cinnamon and a pinch of nutmeg. I'm no longer intimidated to make peach cobbler!
Very simple and easy recipe! Only thing I did different was up the temp to 375 and bake time to 55 minutes! I knew from previous cobbler recipes I had tried that the bake time and temp may be a little off! But the final result was eXcellent!
I didn't have any Chinese 5 Spice so I substituted Pumpkin Pie Spice and some ground chipotle. The flavors were fantastic but there was SO much liquid in the finished product. I'll cut the simple syrup to half a cup next time which ought to do the trick.
This came out looking perfectly, the crust was nice and golden and the syrup was all pretty inside. The problem was the sweetness. I did feel weird using two cups of sugar, one for the syrup and one for the crust, I should have trusted my gut instinct because it was way too sweet. Also the Chinese spices killed it, that anise flavor is hard to get rid off and is too strong. So I just bought another set of peaches and will try this again with only one cup of sugar and cinnamon. We'll see how it comes out.
UPDATE: I made this again last night and only used 1/4 cup of brown sugar and 1/2 cup of white sugar with 1/2 cup of water for the syrup. 1/2 of white sugar to mix with the flour. Melted the butter in the oven in the same baking dish. Replaced the Chinese five-spice with 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Result: AMAZING.
Made it as written with an additional 1/2 t cinnamon to the peach mixture and the oven at 375 instead of 350. Mine was not runny however I made sure to boil the peaches for a full 2 minutes at a rolling boil & that thickened them. Good taste but I prefer a more tart cobbler and would add lemon juice or tart berries next time. The batter on this one traveled throughout & was a bit more like thick custard than the traditional cake-like dough.
Great flavor but after an hour and a half on 350 degrees there was still so much juice and uncooked batter that I had to add an oatmeal/butter/flour topping to help sop it up a bit. Like the 5 spice flavor. Very good flavor.
I made this and was somewhat concerned it would be a failure because of all the neagative reviews and time/temp modifications suggested. Do not increase the temp or cooking time it was perfect as written. I turned the temp to 375 as suggested and the cobbler was browing was too fast. 350 is perfect. I used Vietnamese cinnamom instead of 5 spice powder and added a couple teaspoons of lemon juice to the peaches to keep the color bright and add freshness. As suggested, I did not add all the syrup to the the baking dish (discarded about 1/2 a cup). I wonder if some did not use self-rising flour. That is key. I used the recipe from this site for SR flour. Turned out perfect-golden brown, buttery and not too sweet. Served it warm with vanilla ice cream.
