Old Fashioned Chocolate Cobbler

Made with mostly pantry staples, this chocolate cobbler comes together quickly for a warm and comforting dessert. Serve with generous scoops of vanilla ice cream.

Chocolate cobbler is one of those old-school recipes that has endured for decades because of its genius simplicity and seemingly magical transformation in the oven. It is also one of the most deliciously warm and comforting desserts you’ll ever find. It’s easy enough to throw together on a weeknight, but you’ll want to make it for company. It’s good any time of year, but it’s especially good to tuck into on a cold winter’s night.

This cobbler is made using lots of dry pantry staples, milk, and butter. Eggs are conspicuously missing, but that’s what makes this dish cobbler instead of cake. 

If you have considerations for Veganuary (which is a popular thing, I hear!) this recipe can easily be altered. Butter could be swapped for Earth Balance ‘buttery sticks’ (margarine) and milk for oat or another plant-based milk. Also be sure your chocolate chips are a dairy-free brand such as Enjoy Life.

The first step is easy enough and familiar to studied cobbler makers – melt the butter in the baking dish in a preheated oven. Next you’ll stir together the base ingredients predictably enough: add wet to dry. It’s the moment when you remove the dish from the oven and begin dolloping the batter over the butter that you may start to question things. 

Yes, it’s a lot of butter.  No, you’re not doing anything wrong. My advice is to be at peace with this step and know the end result will make you happy and feed your soul. 

Another layer, a dry mixture of sugar and cocoa is sprinkled over the batter and will help form the cobbler crust. 

The final step before the cobbler bakes is to pour boiling water over everything in the dish, which sounds totally bananas, but it works. No stirring allowed! All of those layers will transform in the oven to a crackled, chewy crust with chocolate pudding hidden underneath.

There will be a bit of jiggle to the cobbler when it comes out of the oven, and you don’t have to worry about the middle being underdone – remember, there are no eggs in this dish. It’s supposed to be completely ooey-gooey underneath that crackled crust.

The cobbler will need to cool slightly before digging in. The pudding underneath will be molten and too hot to eat at first. This dish is best served warm with scoops of vanilla ice cream which cuts the richness and creates pools of cold cream over the warm chocolate pudding. If you don’t have any ice cream, then freshly whipped cream is lovely, too.