The Deep-Dish Strawberry Dessert You Need to Bake

When you don't want to go to the trouble of making a pie, but you want more than just fruit, you turn to a crisp, or a cobbler, or how about a sonker. A sonker is a juicy, fruit-filled, deep-dish dessert rarely found outside of Surry County, North Carolina. You'll love this lazy version. Strawberries cooked into a sweet stew and topped with a pancake batter that bakes into a By the way, this is a lesson from ATK Classes on the America's Test Kitchen app and website. With ATK Classes, you'll get access to a wide variety of lessons filled with masterful techniques, helpful videos, and step-by-step photos, from knife skills and making hand-rolled pasta, to baking and frosting incredible cakes, all taught by our expert instructors. This dish is lazy because we have very little work to do. We're not even going to cut up the strawberries. I have two pounds of strawberries that I did have to do a little work on. I removed the hulls, but that's all I'm going to do. It's very low on effort, but it's delicious. So two pounds of strawberries. To that, I'm going to add a quarter cup of granulated sugar and a quarter teaspoon of table salt. And we'll give this a little stir. Now the sugar and the salt obviously are going to season the strawberries, but it will also help them macerate. So the sugar and salt will both pull moisture out of the strawberries. It will then mix with the sugar and salt and just make this delicious syrup. Okay, that's step one. Step two is to make a bit of a slurry. I have three tablespoons of cornstarch, and to that I'm going to add a quarter cup of water. And we'll whisk this together until the cornstarch is dissolved. Okay, that looks good. So this is a slurry. It's a classic way to thicken fruity desserts. I'll add this to the mix, and we'll give this a stir. And the rest of the sugar, there's still a little bit on the bottom, that's going to dissolve in the water from the slurry. And we'll have a nice mixture. It's going to cling to the strawberries right now, but as this cooks, the salt and the sugar will pull the moisture out of the strawberries, as I mentioned. And the cornstarch is going to gelatinize as the mixture starts to bubble in the oven, and it's going to make things a little thicker. It's going to give it kind of a glazy look that you've seen in pie fillings before. All right, I think I've gotten all my sugar mixed in now, so this is great. Not too much work so far. We should all be doing okay. Now I have an eight inch glass baking dish. We'll put our mixture into the baking dish. You can use frozen berries in this dessert if you'd like. You don't even have to thaw them. You just want to make sure that you have two pounds, and you can go ahead and use them exactly the way that we have with the fresh strawberries. And spread it evenly, so you don't have piles of strawberries in here. Now you can see this is pretty full. As this dish cooks, the strawberries and the juices in there are going to start to bubble up. We want to make sure that they don't bubble up and over onto the bottom of your oven. So I've put a piece of parchment paper in a rimmed baking sheet. We're going to bake this in a 350 degree oven on the middle rack until the berries start to really bubble around the outside. That'll take between 35 and 40 minutes for fresh berries. If you're using frozen berries, it will take a little bit longer, about an hour. Either way, I'm going to go in about halfway through and give everything a stir. Make sure I scrape the bottom of the dish to make sure any of that cornstarch mixture doesn't settle to the bottom and scorch. Okay, this is great. It was just bubbling, and I'm going to run my spatula around, get under it. You can see how nice and juicy this has gotten, how glazy it is because of that slurry that we added with the cornstarch. The strawberries are really nice and softened now, but they're not fully cooked yet. They're going to go back into the oven in a couple minutes. All right, now on to our topping. This is where a fruity stew becomes a sonker. A lazy stew becomes the lazy sonker. So we're going to add the ingredients for basically a big pancake. I mean it's a cakey top, it's not too sweet, not too rich. It's like having all the components of a strawberry shortcake baked together. I have one cup or five ounces of all-purpose flour. This is a teaspoon of baking powder. That's going to give us some nice lift and lightness. This is three quarters of a cup of granulated sugar, and I have a quarter teaspoon of table salt. This will enhance the sweetness, just add a little extra kick. So whisk this together, get all our dried ingredients thoroughly combined. It's such a fun recipe to make because obviously there's not a lot to do with the fruit, and other than the strawberries, every ingredient we're using is probably something that you keep in your pantry or like the milk, your refrigerator. So there's no excuse not to make it. Now we can add our wet ingredients. I have half a cup of whole milk. I have eight tablespoons of unsalted butter that I've melted, and it's still nice and hot. Having the butter still hot, you can melt it in the microwave or on the stovetop. This will ensure that it's a nice pourable consistency, so it's easy to pour it over the fruit. And finally, a quarter teaspoon of vanilla extract, and we'll give that a good whisk and make sure everything comes together and is combined. We'll have lots of richness from that butter, a good amount of lift from the baking powder, a little bit of vanilla will be so nice with the strawberries. Just checking for any dry pieces. This looks good. Now I'm going to start at the corner, and I'll try to pour it as evenly as I can over the fruit. So I try to go over and get it fully covered first, and then I can fill in any spots after. This is a rustic dessert also, so don't fret about this. There's no such thing as a perfect zonker. And then you can use your spatula to kind of push it a little bit if it's uneven, but we don't want to expose any fruit. Better to be a little imperfect. And you might have a little juice escape around the edges, that's okay too. So now we're going to put this back in the oven for another 35 to 40 minutes. See, even the timing on this recipe is easy. We're looking for the cake layer to be golden brown. We're going to test it with a toothpick, and we don't want any crumbs to come out with it. And I'll go back in and rotate it halfway through baking. Look at this zonker! I took this out about 15 minutes ago, and we had lots of bubbling going on. This is why you bake this whole operation on a rimmed baking sheet with some parchment. We don't want this situation to end up on the bottom of your oven. But look at how glossy and gorgeous it looks, and how nice and golden brown this topping is. It's a little crisp, but delicate. Now I did check it, but we'll just take another peek. You can see no crumbs. We started with the cooked berries. We had this nice hot, stewy mixture. We put the pancake mixture on top of that. We had a nice flat surface because of the fruit for the pancake to start cooking on. And because the berries were hot, they jump-started the bottom of our pancake layer. Then we got the great heat from the oven, and that's how we have this nice golden brown, slightly crisp crust. So now we eat. Look at that. Oh goodness. You can see how crispy this has gotten. See this little shard of crust that's popped up, and how thin you have that nice crispy topping. So nice. And so much less work than doing a cobbler or a crumble, where you have to mix a lot of things together and bake that layer. This is kind of like set it and forget it, and then enjoy it. Now you can enjoy this with ice cream. That would be delicious. I will explore that later. You can also try it with some whipped cream. That would also be delicious. I mean look at that. You can see how the berry just kind of sags over my spoon. Like it's given up. It's given up everything, but it's sweet flavor. It just melts in your mouth. But look at this. Can you hear it? You have a nice crispy topping. It's a little bit like the middle of a biscuit. It's buttery, has that shattering thin crust, but then inside it's just tender cakey deliciousness. And I love it when it gets all soggy with the juices. I've never had so much fun being lazy. What a simple way to show off your fresh berries. The cake topping is a mix of everyday pantry ingredients. It's a quick and easy batter that's tender without sogging out. Rich enough to feel like a treat, but light enough for warm summer days. This dessert is a low lift with a very high reward. Now that you're on a roll, why not take the next step? Go to americastestkitchen.com slash classes or download the America's Test Kitchen app to start learning with ATK classes today.