Old Fashioned Fruit Desserts
Know a cobbler from a crisp and a buckle from a Betty

These tried-and-true classics require two things: fruit and dough. How you chose to put them together determines the name. But no matter what you call them, they're all a delicious and comforting end to any meal.

Buckle: Fruit (usually berries) are mixed into or spooned over a yellow cake batter, topped with crumbs and baked. The cake rises as it bakes, enveloping the fruit, then buckles.

• Blueberry and Nectarine Buckle

Cobbler: The fruit filling is baked with a crust which can be a solid sheet or biscuits "cobbled" together. The crust is usually placed over the fruit, but can also be under the fruit, or for true crust lovers, on both top and bottom.

• Peach and Berry Cobbler

Crisp: A crumbly topping of butter, sugar and flour is rubbed together with possible additions of oats, nuts or cookie crumbs, then sprinkled over the fruit filling before baking.

• Rhubarb-Strawberry Crisp

Crumble: The English version of our crisp has a shortbread-type topping of oats, butter, flour and brown sugar.

• Tropical Fruit Crumble

Brown Betty: Similar to a crisp, but the topping is layered into the fruit mixture before baking.

• Pear Brown Betty

Grunt (or slump): Biscuit dough is spooned over the fruit and steamed on the stove top. The dumplings set up but don't brown. It is purported (but never verified) that the dumplings making a grunting noise while cooking.

• Strawberry Rhubarb Slump

Pandowdy: Sliced fruit is topped with a biscuit batter that gets crisp and crumbly. During the last couple minutes of baking, the crust is cut up and pressed into the fruit so it absorbs the sweet syrupy juices.

• Mixed Fruit Pandowdy