Perfect Peach or Apple Cobbler

Filling

3 cups peaches or apples diced, skin on is fine (you can use any fruit you have instead of course)

½ cup white sugar

2 tablespoons butter

150ml cream

2 tablespoons plain flour

Quickie Pastry

1 ½ cups plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ cup almond meal, toasted and cooled

½ cup butter softened

zest of one lemon (optional)

½ cup white sugar or castor sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method

Pre-heat oven to 180c

1. Heat a frying pan with the butter and then add the peaches or the apples.  Do not stir UNTIL the first layer of peaches/apples that hit the pan have browned off.  Then you can stir, if you stir the entire time they will NOT caramelise and you will have regrets.  They taste 100% more delicious if they are caramelised and browned
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3. Cook through and then add the sugar and the vanilla and cook to dissolve the sugar and form a lovely sauce.
4. Add the flour over the peaches/apples and then add the cream and stir like crazy to get rid of any flour lumps, the peaches/apples usually help break up the flour.
5. Cook through and once the flour thickens up in the sauce, remove from heat and let this cool. This is essentially a quickie and sexy peach/apple custard

NOW do the pastry.

Food Processor/Bullet Blender method: Add all the pastry ingredients into a food processor and blend until the pastry comes together and looks like a cookie dough.At first it will look like dry crumbs but keep going and the blade will eventually heat the butter and make it soften and it will turn into a softer dough that can be pressed and stay together.

OR

KitchenAid/Stand Mixer Method: If you are doing this in a KitchenAid simply cream the butter and sugar first and then add the rest of the ingredients

To Assemble:

Grease a 30cm pie dish.  Press half the dough into the base of the pie dish using your hand to thin it out about 3-5mm so really thin.  Use a flat dish like a ramekin to help. Bake for 8-10 minutes until brown. Remove from the oven

Now add the cooled peach custard to the cooked base.

Now grate the remaining pastry over the top of the peaches doing a thin layer and then bake for 12-15 minutes until the top is cooked and brown.

Remove from heat and serve hot or cold with cream, ice cream or custard.

It’s a pleasure  Bang goes the diet but you’ll be happy.

Chef Mel

Vanilla Zulu

The Happy Chef

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The story behind this recipe:

There’s just something about a fond memory of a family trip and this peach cobbler is no exeption.

We had the pleasure of travelling to Texas in 2017 and our amazing friends took us to the Hard Eight BBQ.  At first I was very unimpressed (not really was just starving) by the 45 minute drive and on arrival the queue snaking back through the car park BUT I soon came to see what all the fuss was about when we finally sat down and had our amazing brisket and peach cobbler to follow.  We were so in love with this place we even bought the T-shirt…a sure sign of appreciation as space-strapped travellers.

So fast forward three years and we are now in lock down at home with the Corona virus.  We hit our local fruit and veg store a few days ago and I couldn’t go part the perfect peaches.  At first I was just buying them for the kids as snacks, but they were giant juicy specimens that were worthy of more!   

I have fond memories of magnificent peaches having spent some years living in Magaliesburg in South Africa, where peaches are prolific and ‘mampoer’, the local moonshine, is carefully crafted out of the glorious pickings of peaches!