Perfect fresh peach cobbler

After the fiasco(s) with the clafoutis desserts, I knew exactly what I wasn't making for dessert with the remainder of the peaches coming off our tree.

I considered a peach pie, but then I hearkened back to a raspberry cobbler I used to make with a sugar cookie topping. It's a great topping for fruits with a hint of bitterness, like apricots or peaches (or red raspberries). I got the recipe back then from the fabulous The New Best Recipe. But that book is in storage in Greece right now so I had to make my own recipe. And it turned out nicely, if I say so myself.

If you're wondering why some of my peaches are dark purple, it's because an unusual peach variety grows next door. From the outside it's awful, but when you cut into it, it's the color of a black cherry. The more peachy colored fruits you see are from the peaches on our backyard tree. This is going to be a massive hit for dessert tonight, and one I'll certainly do again. Maybe soon.

Fresh Peach Cobbler with sugar cookie topping

For filling:

1-1.5 pounds peaches
1/2 cup sugar
1 TB flour

For topping:

1 1/4 C All purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 TB milk


First, bring a pot of water to a boil and gently put the peaches in. Wait 30 seconds and remove to a bowl. Peel and slice the peaches into a bowl. Add 1/2 cup sugar and gently toss to coat. Let sit for at least 30 minutes while you make the topping.

For the topping, in a bowl, mix the dry ingredients (flour, soda, salt). Put all the other topping ingredients into the bowl of a mini food processor and blend until well blended. Alternately, cream the butter, add the sugar and mix until fluffy, then add the yolk, vanilla and milk and mix well.

Add the flour to the butter mixture (or vice-versa, it's not like they have to be perfect for this purpose) and mix until well incorporated. I used a wooden spoon and it was fine.

Turn on the oven to 350 F. While oven is preheating, remove the peach slices to a colander over a pot, draining all the juice they've given off into the pot. When they're mostly drained, remove the colander from the pot. Heat the pot of juice over high heat. Let it boil until the liquid becomes thick and is reduced. This step reduces the chance of there being too much juice and reduces the need for too much flour in the filling.

When the syrup has reduced, remove from the heat. Add the sliced peaches back in and sprinkle with the tablespoon of flour, then stir gently to mix.

Place filling in an 8x8 ceramic dish, using a rubber spatula to get all that juicy goodness out of the pan. Now, drop the cookie dough by tablespoonful over the top until it is evenly distributed. No need to smash it down or smooth it - it' will be perfect.

Place it in the oven until the juices are bubbling clear and the top is golden brown.

Because peaches vary quite a lot in sweetness, I recommend serving this with either unsweetened or sweetened whipped cream. I found it just a bit too sweet without any cream, but with the unsweetened cream, it was absolutely perfect as a sweet and well balanced dessert. Top the cream with nutmeg.

Lessons in Clafoutis

I have been bested by a French dessert. I have not written of my trials and tribulations clafoutis, but I have spent the summer trying various recipes and fruits and techniques, and after today I've decided that it's not me, it's clafoutis.

Clafoutis looks like a custard fruit dessert. It's generally a flour-milk-egg concoction, traditionally with cherries but certainly one can substitute other fruits. Which I have done in many variations. I've tried it with cherries, berries, plums and now peaches. And I don't like it one bit.

This is not the first time I've not liked a dessert, but each time is like a little death to me. The problem with clafoutis is that there's no contrast, and no surprise. It doesn't make the fruit better, it doesn't 'set it off', it just holds the fruit. The best way I can describe it is a soggy pancake - but it's not soggy. It's heavy. A fruit dessert shouldn't be heavy.

So, if you're thinking of making a dessert to impress, or something exotic for dessert, I highly recommend you not make clafoutis. It's very plain. Edible, but as we know - the rule of dessert is that it needs to be worth the calories. And after at least a dozen attempts, I can definitively say that clafoutis is not worth the calories. Sorry to dissapoint.

Desserts from France: Crepes with peach jam

If you're wondering why the headline says peach jam but the picture features something reddish/black, I'd like to introduce you to the black peach. As of now, it appears to only grow in my neighbor's yard, a situation I shall quickly remedy by planting every single pit I can get my hands on. Come 3 or 4 years from now, I'll be the queen of black peaches. Or someone will.

Anyhow, I had this wonderful peach jam that didn't quite fit in the jars. As you know, any 'leftover' sweets MUST BE EATEN IMMEDIATELY or the world will stop turning and everything on the Earth's crust will be swept off the mantle, leaving a big hunk of rock. It's such a small price to pay to save all of humanity, so I went ahead and planned my use.

One of the wonderful things the French have give us is crepes. Now, I'm going to be honest - American desserts as a rule are far superior to other country's desserts, taken on a whole. That's because we got the best of all the ethnic stuff and aren't trapped by our traditions. But, crepes make a wonderful dessert from France and are dead simple.

Here's the 'recipe' if something so simple can be called a recipe:

1 cup flour
1 cup milk (maybe plus a bit)
2 eggs
2 TB butter, melted
1/8 tsp salt
1 tablespoon sugar

(If you're not making dessert crepes, leave out the sugar and double the salt)

Mix it all together until is very pourable - about the consistency of kefir, if you are familiar with it. Pour a Tablespoon of oil into your frying pan then wipe it around with a paper towel. It should just have a sheen of oil, any more and your crepe will slide around the pan. Put it on a medium high heat, then add about 1/4 cup of batter, quickly rotating the pan to evenly coat the bottom with batter. If your crepe won't run, or comes out too thick, add a bit of milk until it works right.

Cook until the whole top has lost its gloss and you see bubble forming underneath. Turn it. I use a knife and my fingers, but you can use a good sharp spatula to turn it over. Let cook for about 10-15 seconds, then fold in half and half again and remove from the pan.

You need to be fast, crepes cook very quickly. The first one is usually a throwaway - it doesn't color correctly and you rarely get the batter right straight away. So if your first one is awful, that's how it's supposed to be.

The beautiful thing about crepes is that they don't soak up liquids, so they are great for something that clings, like a loose peach jam or similar.

Arrange your triangles to look nice, add whatever your topping is and you have a lovely, easy, not very filling dessert. And because a lot of people think it's hard to make crepes, you might impress someone.

Peaches like you've never seen before!

Please excuse the low quality of the photo. In real life, all these peaches (except the two halves of a regular 'yellow' peach I put in for reference) were the color of a black cherry.

I found them in my neighbor's yard (they don't live here and I have permission to harvest). I nearly ignored them because the fully ripe peaches were a grayish color with just a hint of rose underneath. I thought that our drought this year had caused some malfunction. But then I shook the tree and one peach hit the trunk on the way down, tearing the skin and revealing this amazing 'black peach' flesh underneath.

One tentative taste told me these really were ripe peaches, of a color I've never seen before.

As the tree is too tall (and I'm forbidden from climbing the ladder ever since the time I fell off it and whacked my head and caused much sleeplessness in the home due to needing observation for possible concussion) I had to shake the peaches down, which naturally caused a lot of bruising.

But what better way to use a windfall of these beautiful peaches than to make some peach jam? So, jam I did. Amazingly, these peaches must be absolutely packed with pectin and acid, because they practically jelled before I had a chance to cook them. The jam is the color of blackberry jam but smells and tastes like peach jam. It is truly luscious.

And I would have missed it if I had judged this book by it's cover. Just goes to show.

What do you do when you live in France and have fresh peach jam and a blog about dessert? That's right, you make crepes. That's coming up in the next post...stay tuned!

Olive Oil Desserts

I like to explore unique dessert ingredients. I once made a carrot cake (my guy's most favorite dessert) while in Greece. The carrot cake is ubiquitous in the US and not unheard of in England, but when the Greeks found out this cake had been made with carrots, they developed sudden stomach aches. They were confounded, offended, and shocked that I would put this vegetable into a dessert.

It sounds funny, I suppose, if you've always eaten sweet potato pie, pumpkin pie, and carrot cake, but these ingredients are exotic in some parts of the world. Never mind that the Greeks have 'spoon sweets' made of rose petals, tiny eggplants, and immature walnuts in the husk.

What I'm saying is that a dessert ingredient is only exotic if it's new to you. It's part of our cultural heritage, these vegetables used in desserts. And that's great.

To quell the Greeks' disturbance over my 'crazy' carrot dessert, I thought I'd explore olive oil desserts. There are not many, but they do exist. One is an olive oil and lemon sorbet and the other is an Olive Oil Cake. Both of these recipes include an olive oil and fruit compote, which really is a great way to serve something unique and delicious. What is important when you're making a dessert with so few ingredients is that you use the absolute best pure olive oil and ripe fruit.

I served both of these desserts to non-Greek people for whom carrots are okay dessert ingredients and olive oil was exotic. The cake with citrus compote was a real hit - in part because people feel better about eating a dessert with healthy olive oil than they do about butter. The lemon-olive oil sorbet was not as great a hit, but would be an excellent finish to a light meal or especially at an olive oil tasting.

Don't be afraid to think outside the 'box' when it comes to dessert ingredients - the 'box', as you can see, is of our own making.