Doing Things With Peaches!

A workmate and good friend of Hubby's has a very prolific black boy peach tree.  Every year we're given peaches and when we have pigs, buckets of bruised and windfall peaches.  Have you ever seen a pig eating these?  It looks like they've been taking big chunks out of each other, dark purple-red peach flesh dripping down their jaws.  It's really quite disturbing.

Hubby got these on Friday, the same day as his motorbike came back from the shop.  Our plan was for him to bring the motorbike home and as I was going into Christchurch for the weekend, I'd drop him back at work Friday night to bring his car home.

With the Mosque shootings on Friday afternoon, all those plans changed.  We didn't go back for the car (with a bag of peaches sitting in it) until late Sunday afternoon.  Probably half of the bag has gone to the chickens and they look just as dreadful eating them as the pigs did.

So today I started to do things with peaches.

Previously, I have bottled them in a light syrup.  I think I still have a few jars in the depths of my pantry, we don't eat fruit this way very often.  A few years ago, I cut them up and froze them.  They're still there in the freezer too.  I have to move them now and then searching for other things.

I wanted something I was sure I would use.

Out came the recipe books and searches through their dessert chapters.  The old books, which are usually my go-to for anything like this, yielded nothing that excited me.  I considered the peach souffle, but as I've never made a souffle of any sort in my life before, I chose to try it another time with a simpler version.  Peach Flummery sounded interesting, but I didn't have enough cream or gelatine on hand.

Into the bigger, flasher and newer cookbooks I dove.  One had peach muffins.  The next had a peach crumble.  We like crumbles, they're simple and easy and adaptable.  I can freeze them.

The original recipe and inspiration came from River Cottage Gluten Free.  I'm a little wary of this book these days.  I made a cake from it about six months ago that had a lot of 'mix x, y and z together in a small bowl, then put aside'.  Six different bowls and a saucepan were required for this cake!  The cake was okay, but not anything overly special. So I read through the recipe carefully, looking for sneaky over the top dish usage.

I didn't have all of the ingredients, but crumbles are fairly adaptable.  Below is my interpretation.

Peach Crumble

Peach Filling

Approx 800g peaches, stoned and cut into chunks.
Brown sugar to taste (depending on how sweet the peaches are)
30g butter

Crumble Topping

150g hazelnut meal
75g brown sugar
30g sorgham flour or psyllium husk
30g potato starch
1 tsp ground cinnamon
60g butter

Preheat the oven to 180 deg Celsius.

Put the filling ingredients into a saucepan. Heat gently until the peaches have softened and the butter and sugar have formed a thick sauce.

Put the dry crumble ingredients into a food processor and blitz to mix.  Add butter and process until butter is fully rubbed in.

Pour or spoon filling into dish and spread crumble over top.  I like to get handfuls of the crumble and sprinkle it around and around until the fruit is completely covered.

Bake for 40 minutes.  Best served warm.