Peaches are at the peak of their season right now, and the best thing you can do to a peach is not a cake. Peach cobbler is an American dessert with clean logic: cooked fruit at the bottom, dough thrown on top without shaping, and a bake that does the work for you.

Its origins go back to the 18th and 19th centuries, when British settlers arrived in America with a habit for fruit pies - but without the right ovens and tins. Instead of giving up, they threw the dough over the fruit and put it in to bake. Necessity produced a dessert. In the southern states, Georgia and the Carolinas, the peach suited it best.

Ingredients (for a 22x32 cm dish)

For the filling: 1.5 kg ripe peaches, 170 g white sugar, 60 g brown sugar, 25 g cornstarch, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, half a teaspoon cinnamon, a little nutmeg (optional), a quarter teaspoon salt and 30 g butter.

For the topping: 250 g plain flour, 70 g sugar, 2 teaspoons baking powder, half a teaspoon baking soda, half a teaspoon salt, 115 g very cold butter, 180 ml buttermilk (or milk with 1 tablespoon lemon juice) and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. For sprinkling: 2 tablespoons sugar and half a teaspoon cinnamon.

Method

Heat the oven to 190 degrees. Peel the peaches, remove the stones and cut them into pieces of about one centimetre. Mix them with both sugars, the cornstarch, lemon juice, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Leave them for ten minutes - this is not a step to skip, this is where the peach releases its juice.

Transfer the mixture to a pan and cook for five to six minutes over medium heat, stirring gently until the syrup thickens. Take it off the heat, add the butter and stir until it melts. Pour into a greased dish.

For the topping: mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, soda and salt. Cut the cold butter into cubes and work it in with your fingertips until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs. Add the buttermilk and vanilla and stir only until it comes together - it should stay thick and irregular. The irregularity is exactly the point.

Drop spoonfuls of dough over the peaches and leave gaps so the fruit shows through. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Bake for 45 to 55 minutes until the top turns golden and it starts bubbling at the edges. Leave it 20 to 30 minutes before serving.

What makes this dessert good is that it asks for no skill - it asks for patience in two places: the ten minutes of rest for the peaches and the thirty minutes of rest before you cut into it. With vanilla ice cream on top, the difference between this and a hundred-step cake is almost impossible to notice.