Peach Cobbler for Communing
Sara Crocoll Smith
From the recipe notes of Chef Adriana Martinez:
An irresistible southern dessert that boasts healing properties and the ability to commune with the dead. (Great selling point)
Adapted from a recipe book found in the kitchen at Willow Creek Mansion during my Willa Cromwell Artists of Perception residency. Book estimated to be at least fifty years old and believed to be written by Willa Cromwell herself.
Ingredients
Cobbler filling
Five plump peaches (avoid bruising)
¾ cup Orchard Hill honey
Note: Tiny, glass bee-shaped jar. Keep branding when sourcing? Acquired in upstate New York from an apple orchard off the main road. Nina what’s-her-last-name? owns the place. Could have better marketing for the brilliant lore she’s developed. Honey supposedly allows you to see the dead; customers will eat that up!
¼ teaspoon salt
Cobbler batter
8 tablespoons butter
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup brown sugar
¾ cup milk
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon minced ginger
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon Georgia red clay, finely sifted
Note: Retrieved from the drought-parched land near Willow Creek Mansion
Ice cream
4 cups heavy whipping cream
1 cup sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon boiled willow bark essence
Note: Navigated carefully over the root-infested trunk of ‘The Weeping Willow’ (Birdie gives it too much mystique, it’s just a tree). Collected ten-inch-long strips of bark. Ignored the wind whispering through the emerald leaves, it’s nonsense. Laid bark to dry in sun for a week. Boiled for 30 minutes. Amp up medicinal qualities. Legal disclaimer?)
Instructions
1. Combine ice cream ingredients. Put in ice cream maker for 30 minutes. No, it doesn’t look like swirling white ghosts. But maybe I can play that up for the customers? They don’t need to know I don’t believe. It’s all about what they believe, what they crave.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
3. Peel and slice peaches. Cook peaches, Orchard Hill honey, and salt in a saucepan, stirring, for three minutes. Set aside. I should smell this. Why can’t I smell it? Am I coming down with something like Marcel? Ugh. I better be able to taste it.
4. Mix dry batter ingredients. Stir in the milk, disregard how it seeps and squelches like blood when it hits the crimson clay. Stop mixing. STOP.
5. Add melted butter to baking pan. Pour the batter mixture over the butter evenly. Put peach mixture on top.
6. Bake for 45 minutes. Serve warm with ice cream. Generate a sense of haunting whimsy (not doom) when drawing a heaping scarlet bite into your mouth.
Taste Notes
Birdie said the “delightful bitterness of the willow bark crashes into the sweetness of the honey” (excelente, exactly what I intended).
But I couldn’t taste a thing. I’m not worried. I’m not. Their silly superstitions hold them back. Nothing will get in the way of my dreams for my restaurant. Nada.
Follow-up, Birdie: the bitterness lingered (how to fix?)… and why did she have to mention an inscription (that none of us saw by the way). Not that I don’t believe her, but do I believe her?
Take from the Weeping Willow, and the Weeping Willow will take from you.
If you enjoyed this piece, you can’t miss The Haunting of Willow Creek! Find out if Adriana, Birdie, and the others can escape Willow Creek alive in this thrilling Southern gothic ghost story!
About the author:
Sara Crocoll Smith (she/her) is the author of the ghostly gothic horror series Hopeful Horror, which includes her debut novel The Haunting of Orchard Hill and the forthcoming The Haunting of Willow Creek. She’s also the award-winning editor of the Love Letters to Poe anthologies and creator of the Love Letters to Poe website, a haven to celebrate the works of Edgar Allan Poe. For an exclusive morsel of ghosts and daylight horror, join her newsletter to get the free short story "The Strangle of Ivy."
