You know pudding cake, right? That mysterious chemistry that happens when you combine certain baking ingredients and it makes its own sauce – like magic! I’ve had chocolate pudding cake and lemon pudding cake (here on my blog it’s called a Lemon Sponge Pudding), and count them as favorites of mine, but oh, this one. Wait till you try it.

Since it’s October, my thoughts turn to Fall. I love Fall. Here in Southern California, though, it comes late and doesn’t last long. My physical calendar says yes, October is Fall, but real Fall doesn’t arrive here, usually, until November. As I write this we’ve had a couple of beautiful cooler days, but we’re anticipating Santa Ana winds which usually come with very high heat (winds blow in from the hot deserts). Most people dread them – they blow like hell. They wreak all kinds of minor havoc. Light weight things get tossed around back yards, into pools, get hung up in trees. And leaves and debris blow just everywhere. Weak limbs on trees and even whole trees can fall and block roads and down power lines. Often my internet connection is shaky. Why that should be I don’t know since the cable is underground. But it happens almost every time. And no, none of this is related to a hurricane – there is no water/rain associated with the Santa Ana winds. Here where we live, on a western-facing hill, the winds come roaring up and over the peak of the hill behind us, then create a twist and roll back to our yard and particularly our side patio. Birds hunker down and try to hold on. I don’t know how they manage to eat when we have the winds. Our awnings are pulled in, all our summer umbrellas are stowed, our rolling cart that lives on our patio is tied down. We keep towels on our patio, covering cushions to protect them from sun damage – if we didn’t take those in they’d all be flying up the road, off to neighbors’ yards, or caught in bushes. It’s crazy. We get these winds during the Fall and Spring mostly. And now is the season. We’ve been told we’ll have 3 days of winds – that’s a long one. If we’re lucky they last just one day. Not this time, I hear.

But it’s a good day to stay inside and bake, if you’re so inclined! I am going to bake bread today (one of those overnight no-knead types that I mixed up a couple of days ago). If it’s successful, I’ll post it. It’s a whole wheat rye loaf.

We expected a big crowd for our bible study group last week when I made this. We had 9 people, I think it was, and am so glad I made a double batch of this – that way we did have a bit of left overs. A couple of conscientious people decided not to have any. I couldn’t resist. I made some sweetened whipped cream to put on top, but didn’t take the time to photograph one, so I created a photo-worthy version the next day with some cream poured over.

The recipe comes from fellow blogger (and friend) Marie Rayner, who lives in England. I started reading her blog many years ago, A Year from Oak Cottage. Some years ago when we visited England, we visited Marie and her husband Todd (and their adorable then-puppy Mitzie) and went out to dinner together. Marie’s recipes are posted at her 2nd blog, The English Kitchen. Marie loves pudding cakes and explains on the blog post about this recipe about several of her other pudding cakes. When I made this I didn’t have enough milk, but I did have buttermilk, so I adapted the recipe. That meant I reduced the amount of baking powder and added baking soda – I also added just a tetch more fluid – I had to do that because the initial batter was so thick it couldn’t hardly hold all the flour. Hence I added more buttermilk.

Now, let’s get to this pudding cake. I am very long-winded this morning . . . this dessert is SO easy to make. You create a cake batter first (it’s just a bit on the stiff side), then you create the sauce part (a lot of brown sugar, water and butter). The batter is spread into a pan, the sauce part is poured over, then you dot the top with fresh chopped apples and walnuts. That’s it. Into the oven to bake for nearly an hour and it’s done.

Here at left you can see the different steps. The top photo shows the fairly stiff batter in the pan. The liquid was poured in after that and when you do that the batter starts to separate some. Blobs of batter float to the top. Don’t be dismayed by the appearance (I should have taken a picture of it at that point). Just persevere. The 2nd photo shows it ready to go in the oven, then below that that finished cake. At first – when I snapped the photo of that step, you could not see or feel the pudding part.

The cake cools for awhile and when I scooped into the pan to serve it, there is all that delicious, brown sugary caramel-like sauce in the bottom. Do spoon some of that sauce over each portion.

What’s GOOD: oh my goodness, everything about it. I just loved this dessert. Do note that a 8×8 pan only contains 2 T. of butter – so it’s very VERY low fat. It’s not low sugar, however. I should have made it with some Splenda, but often the first time I make things I want to make it according to the recipe. Since this is one of those mysterious chemistry things, I was afraid to change it much.

What’s NOT: gosh, nothing. Definitely a keeper.

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Decadent! Rich! Sweet! Chocolaty! All of those things and more. If you crave an over-the-top kind of dessert, here’s your ticket to chocolate nirvana.

Right off the bat I’ll tell you, this dessert is really rich and sweet. Not the kind I’d serve after a rich 3 or 4 course meal. Maybe after a more simple meal, even soup, salad and bread, when you can handle the calories, fat and sugar! When you’re still hungry. Phillis Carey served this at a recent cooking class. She says that even though her class teaching subject could be something like meats, or even vegan, if she doesn’t serve dessert, her class sighs in sadness. So, usually Phillis prepares some kind of dessert in every cooking class. I have many-a-dessert in my repertoire that have come from her classes. She and I have many things in common when it comes to desserts.

The cake is fairly normal in that it’s a chocolate batter, using unsweetened chocolate, bittersweet chocolate and cocoa. It makes a relatively dense cake – this isn’t a light and fluffy kind of fare. More like a brownie, actually. You also make a caramel sauce – and at the end chocolate is added in, hence it’s a chocolate-caramel sauce. You absolutely NEED the vanilla ice cream to cut the richness and the chocolate. Don’t skimp on that ice cream.

What’s GOOD: Well, everything about the dessert is good – even in 2 parts (both the torte and the sauce) are delicious all by themselves. Put it all together, and it’s just decadent. What else can I say. As I mentioned, be sure to NOT skimp on the ice cream.

What’s NOT: If a complaint could be made, it’s that this dessert is ultra-rich and sweet. What’s there not to like about that, though?

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Going on a cooking or baking frenzy is fun, sometimes challenging and tiring. I love trying new recipes (and if you didn’t feel the same, you probably would not be reading my blog), so when I needed to bring goodies for a women’s meeting, I went through the hundreds of to-try recipes I have in my “internet” cookbook arsenal. This is one, and coming up in the next week will be 2 others.

What I wanted were some varied baked things – not just cookies, or bars. Three other women were on my committee and they brought fruit, cold drinks and peanut butter & jelly treats (on bagels). Sometimes the hostess serves coffeecake, since the meeting is in the morning, but I’ve noticed that rarely do people take any of it. I thought finger food would be the best. First up is this easy zucchini bread, a sweet bread that used about 2 zucchini.

The recipe is simple enough, one devised by Peabody, over at Culinary Concoctions by Peabody. Way back in 2008. But who’s counting any of the recipes we set aside to make . . . some day?

You may recall that a few years ago I went through my ancient files – recipes dating from about 1962 to 1995. Within each of those folders were ones I’d made and ones to try (mixing them in the same folder was a bad idea), just divided into categories like salad, beef, veggies, etc. Once I retired in 1995 I started entering all of my favorite recipes into MasterCook and then throwing away the clippings. That took nearly a year, pulling some from those clippings, and many others from cookbooks with flags on the pages. But there were still hundreds – gee, maybe a thousand or more – clippings in the pocket folders. A few years ago I started systematically going through those folders again, tossing some and re-sorting them into sub-categories and returning them to the Pentaflex hangars. As time has gone on, I rarely even refer to those recipes anymore – maybe only every 3 months or so. That tells me I should get rid of them, Period. But gosh, is that ever hard! Don’t know if I can do it. To do so, I’ll have to go through them yet again. Sigh . . . so many recipes, never enough time. I seem to veer toward new recipes, either ones I find on the internet or in the hundreds of cookbooks I own. I could cook for 10 years with nothing but 4-5 of my newer cookbooks. Well, I will think about all that another day . . .

Back to this chocolate zucchini bread. Divine. Oh, I think that’s a no-no word in foodie culture. Bloggers use way too many superlative adverbs – yummy, luscious, delicious, fantastic, greatest, and we’re supposed to nearly forget about using an exclamation point. Oh dear. I’m guilty. Garrett McCord (from Vanilla Garlic) wrote up a post recently about not using the following words: nice, good, bad, great, unctuous (which he says has a totally different meaning than food writers [me included] may use it for) and better than sex. I don’t think I’ve ever used that last phrase, but undoubtedly I’ve used all of the others. But McCord cautions bloggers to clarify – if it’s nice, explain exactly what makes it nice. Or if it’s good, exactly how or why it’s good. I think I do that ever since I added the little blurbs at the bottom of my posts – the what’s good and what’s not. I’ve had a few of my friends tell me that they bypass all the paragraphs I write and simply go to the what’s good and what’s not to decide if they’re going read the recipe and/or print/save it. Or not.

What’s different about this bread is the addition of mascarpone cheese in the mixture. It also is a buttermilk based batter – I always like using buttermilk since it makes cakes and breads so very tender. This one included. My only difficulty was getting the very center cooked through. I used a different sized pan, so I expected the timing to be different than the stated recipe, but after researching all over the ‘net I’ve concluded that moist short (non-yeast) breads like banana bread and I’ll include this bread in the same category since it’s moist from the zucchini, should be baked to an internal temp of about 200°. Some recipes say 190° or even as high as 210° – and I baked mine to 190°, but only after the bread cooled and I cut into the very center, did I discovered that it wasn’t quite cooked, right down the center, inside that crack in the ridge and down about 1/2 inch or so.

The age-old test of whether a cake/bread is done, using the toothpick test, still seems to be a good one, though, if you don’t have an instant read thermometer.

What’s GOOD: loved this stuff. It has the heft of a bread, but it’s very tender (thin slices are not possible with this). It’s not a cake, though – maybe it’s something in between. The chocolate flavor is just right. And if you shred the zucchini finely (mine were a bit on the more-medium sized) you’ll not even see it. It freezes well. A real winner of a recipe, thanks to Peabody.
What’s NOT: nothing, whatsoever. Very worth making.

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Does this cake look like it’s sitting on a mirror? It isn’t really – it just mounded high in my bundt pan and sits awkwardly on it’s top/bottom and it happens that the chocolate swirl just looks quite reflective. Anyway, this is one of those easy cake-mix concoctions, and a winner it is. Read on . . .

If I’d ever heard of this cake before, I don’t recall it. But I was intrigued after reading Bonny Wolf’s book, Talking with My Mouth Full: Crab Cakes, Bundt Cakes, and Other Kitchen Stories. I wrote up a post about it – I loved the book. Loved Bonny Wolf’s creative writing and the fun, witty and interesting stories she writes. Included in the book were a smattering of recipes. As I searched the internet for info about this cake I discovered than the genesis of it was a Pillsbury bake-off for that tunnel of fudge cake. Remember that? This is reminiscent of that cake, but it does not have the lava cake oozing in the middle as the bake-off recipe did. That cake called for a buttercream frosting packaged mix that Pillsbury no longer produces. So bakers have devised other recipes. This definitely isn’t one of those, so don’t be confused here. This cake is just a chocolate pistachio swirl cake.

A couple of days ago I gave you the recipe for the chocolate syrup. Oh, what a revelation that was! Home made chocolate syrup. I used 2/3 cup of it in this cake. The yellow (or white) cake mix batter is mixed with a pkg of instant pistachio pudding (the dry stuff, makes the batter quite green), then you add in orange juice (that was a bit different), oil, eggs, water, etc. Part is poured into the pan, then the remaining is mixed with the chocolate syrup, poured on top, swirled with a knife and baked. The finished cake has virtually no green tint to it – maybe the heat baked out the color, but I’ll tell you, when I started, the batter was definitely green!

Not wanting to over bake it, I researched the internal temp of baked cake – 190°. (Across the internet, recommendations varied between 190° and 214°, but the one suggesting the high temp was for a pound cake – I decided to go for the low temp.) So, with my oven at 350°, the cake took 55 minutes for me. I let it rest for 15 minutes, then inverted it. The recipe indicated to dust with powdered sugar. I didn’t do that part, as I was serving the cake at an outdoor music event (our local symphony performing music from Pixar movies) and we eat dessert at intermission, sitting in our seats along with cups of coffee and Bailey’s. Trying to dust with sugar at that point just would be too difficult. All 6 of us who had the cake raved about it though, with or without the sugar!

What’s GOOD: the cake is incredibly moist. The kind of moist that is hard to get outside of using a cake mix. It was quite easy to make. I did make the chocolate syrup (but you don’t have to) as well. The cake kept very well for several days. The chocolate flavor will depend entirely on the brand and type of cocoa you use. Mine was a higher fat Natural Dutch Process cocoa (24%) from Penzey’s. Or use Hershey’s Special Dark. Everyone liked the chocolaty flavor.
What’s NOT: nothing other than I don’t keep instant pistachio pudding on hand, so a trip to the market was required!

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Oh, chocolate syrup, where have you been all my life? I cannot believe that since I started cooking when I was 20, to now when I’m in my 70s, that I’ve never thought to MAKE chocolate syrup. But of course, home made syrup would be better than the Hershey’s plastic squeeze bottle. Ha. By a long shot!

And it’s so EASY! It’s nothing more than water, sugar, powdered cocoa (unsweetened, Dutch process), salt and vanilla. You do have to cook it – but hey, it takes less than 10 minutes to make, start to finish, including going to get the ingredients. So you’ll have no excuse for not trying it.

I will tell you, however, that I buy a specialty cocoa, Penzey’s, their half pound bag. Their cocoa is really chocolaty, dark and doesn’t lump. I only use it in special things I make – where I’m sure the taste will come through in the finished baked good. I also use Hershey’s Special Dark when I can find it, but I’m all out of it at the moment.

The recipe came from Gourmet, back in 2003, according to epicurious. I looked at several recipes before I tried this one. Why this one? Because one commenter said she’s tried lots and lots of syrup recipes and once she tried this one, she’s never looked back. That was all the convincing I needed. Another commenter said this syrup is addictive – when you realize that it’s nearly fat-free – it’s not like eating chocolate candy, but you get the taste of full chocolate – she’d even sneak in the refrigerator now and then for a spoonful.

In a couple of days I’ll post a recipe for a bundt cake that I made with this chocolate syrup, then you’ll know why I went to the trouble of making the syrup myself. Once you dissolve (boil) the sugar and water, you add the cocoa and use a whisk to mix it in. The cocoa wants to clump, so using a whisk is necessary. I actually used one of those bounce-up-and-down whisks for this, to make sure there weren’t any little pockets of cocoa. It simmers for 3 minutes, while you whisk, and it’s done. It thickens up more when it cools. With my spatula in hand, once I poured all the syrup in the jar you see at top, I carefully scraped every last smidgen into my mouth. <grin>

So far I haven’t tried it ON anything, but if I do so before this post goes up, I’ll come back in and edit this part. What I tasted on the spoon was sensational. That ultra-dark chocolate taste I was looking for.

What’s GOOD: how EASY it is to make. I’ll never go back to Hershey’s squeeze bottle. Taste is fantastic; of course, the quality of the cocoa powder will determine how great the chocolate flavor is. Worth seeking out some good stuff.

What’s NOT: gosh, nothing.

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With peaches in season, this dessert is SO easy and so tasty. Only one thing – you have to have amaretti cookies on hand to make it. I had a few, actually have had about 8 of them sealed up in a vacuum bag for about a year, but when I opened it up that lovely almond flavor poured out, so I was assured they were still usable.

This is a recipe I’ve made numerous times over the years. Back in the 80’s we were in a 4-couple gourmet group that generally met for dinner for about 6-7 years, about every other month. Occasionally we would gather on our boat (back then it was in Newport harbor, not in San Diego as it is now) for a sunset sail, or in someone’s backyard for a summer brunch. I was the point-man with the group – always starting the ball rolling on when we’d meet, talking with the hostess about the calendar and menu ideas. And because everyone in the group generally didn’t want to have to decide on recipes, they relied on me to do all the menu and recipe selection. I’d create a menu of new things that I thought went together, I’d photocopy the bunch and mail out the pages to everyone a week or so before our event.

I can vaguely see (in my head) the magazine clipping I had for this recipe, but I don’t know where it came from. I did not find it on the internet, although I did find a similar one made by Giada on the Food Network, and she tops hers with whipped cream. With the name Piemontese, it means it’s a dessert from the Piemonte region of northern Italy. And since it has amaretti cookies in it, that’s another clue it’s Italian.

In a nutshell, here’s what you do: buy larger peaches if at all possible (because you need a bigger pit-cavity to spoon the cookie mixture into), peel them with a vegetable peeler (remember, the newer Messermeister Pro Touch Swivel Peeler will peel tomatoes, peaches, nectarines easily). Cut them in half, discard the seeds, and place in a buttered baking dish. With a peach or two (you use a third of the peaches for the filling), puree in a food processor, then combine with sugar, egg yolks and some crushed up Amaretti cookies. Scoop that wet mixture into the center of the peaches, dot with butter (yes, butter) and bake for  about 30 minutes until the tops are golden brown. I had white fleshed peaches that were on the smaller side, so it made it a bit harder to fill the small cavities with the peach, egg and amaretti mixture. Some of it oozed over the edges, but the egg helps to keep in intact.

I prefer to serve the peach halves warm (not hot) so ideally bake them an hour or two before serving. You can also make them a few hours ahead and reheat them for 10 minutes in a low oven before placing them on dessert plates or in bowls and scooping a little bit of vanilla ice cream on top. If they’re warm, the ice cream melts (which is fine) or if they’ve cooled to room temp then you can add a bit more ice cream – some will soften, some won’t. Don’t overwhelm the peaches with ice cream – this dessert is all about the peaches, not the ice cream. If the peaches are large, you can serve each person just a half, especially if you give them a nice (but small) portion of ice cream alongside. If they’re medium to smaller peaches, each person should have two.

If you have trouble finding amaretti cookies (I buy mine at a specialty food store, and at some times of the year our local Italian deli has them) you can, if you want to, make your own. I’ve never done that, but surely they’re not hard. Here’s a link to Martha Stewart’s site with detailed instructions.

What’s GOOD: the lovely, sweet, succulent peaches, almost dripping in butter (but they’re not, really). Oh so very tasty. The almond scent from the amaretti cookies shines through. If you choose to put whipped cream on it, add a bit of Amaretto to the cream, which will highlight the almond flavor.
What’s NOT: gee whiz, nothing at all – only that when it’s not peach season you probably can’t have these. I have made them with extra-deluxe canned peaches, but they’re definitely not as good!

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Scrumptious, smooth and loaded with flavor from the vanilla bean and the potent blackberry Zinfandel sauce on top. If you like panna cotta, you’ll love this one.

There are 2 recipes for panna cotta here on my blog. The one linked is an Ina Garten recipe that uses about equal cream and yogurt. I do have another one – a boxed mix, and not normally what I’d recommend anyway. Recently Phillis Carey made a different one – a lemon panna cotta that was fantastic. It was identical to this one except she used a blueberry sauce instead of the blackberry AND she used liquid vanilla instead of the vanilla bean. I’ll give you both recipes at the bottom. Obviously Phillis really likes the stuff – I think she’s made it 4-5 times in the last couple of years in various classes I’ve taken, all with a slightly different twist to them. But I really, REALLY liked this blackberry one. Part of why I like this is the vanilla bean, but it’s the sauce that makes it. But I also really liked the lemon one too. Obviously it was the lemon that hooked me since I’m a lemon nut. So maybe you need to make both!

All of Phillis’s recipes for panna cotta include sour cream or yogurt for part of the mixture. The sauce: you combine 2/3 of the blackberries with sugar and Zinfandel, whizz that up in the food processor. Then you strain out all the seeds so you’re left with a clear liquid. That is cooked for just a minute or so, cooled, THEN you add the remaining 1/3 of the fresh berries and just let it sit until cool.

The panna cotta itself is so easy – unflavored gelatin, lemon juice, whipping cream, sugar, salt, vanilla bean is cooked briefly, then once that has cooled some you whisk the cream mixture into the the sour cream. Pour into ramekins and chill. The topping is added just before serving.

The VANILLA BEAN one: (scroll down below for the lemon one):

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The LEMON one:

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Without question, I’m begging you to make this. While rhubarb is still in season (barely) get yourself some, and gather some nice juicy strawberries and prepare this relatively simple cobbler that will make you and your guests swoon.

This recipe all started when our daughter Sara called to say she had some rhubarb one of her customers had given her, and since we were having a family get-together at her house in San Diego with dear friends who were visiting us from Philadelphia, she wanted to use it. Some of the group went sailing on our boat (which lives in San Diego) in the afternoon, then we high-tailed it to her house in time for dinner.

She’d never cooked rhubarb before. We live about 70 miles apart so we collaborated on who would do what – she did most of the dinner – I brought sangak bread and made this dessert. I found some rhubarb in one of our stores so brought additional – she said she didn’t have a lot. And, before we left home I mixed up the dry ingredients for the biscuits you see above. Once there I asked Sara for her rhubarb and she promptly pulled out 3 bunches of baby red chard. I laughed and told her no, that’s not rhubarb! She laughed. She had never even HAD chard before, she thought. It was very limp looking (she hadn’t wrapped it in a plastic bag) so I don’t even know that it will be edible.

Anyway, good thing I’d brought about 8 stalks of rhubarb. I cut up all the fruit, added the sugar, tapioca and orange zest and let it sit for about 20 minutes (lower picture above). I spread it out to all the corners (I made a 1 1/2 sized recipe, so I used a 9×13 Pyrex dish, which was perfectly sized. Then I mixed up the dry ingredients, added the butter and cut that in, then added the milk and egg, mixed, plopped the biscuits all over the top (upper photo above). Baked for 35 minutes. Done! We let it rest about 45 minutes or so before we enjoyed it (immensely) with vanilla ice cream on the side.

The recipe came from Simply Recipes, Elise Bauer’s blog. She explained that this recipe was revised and revised until she got it, finally, just right. I agree. It’s marvelous.

What’s GOOD: oh my goodness, was this ever fantastic! Next time I’m at the grocery store I’m looking for any remaining rhubarb. Strawberries are still in, so I know I’ll find those. The biscuit/cobbler is tender and tasty. Loved it with vanilla ice cream. Altogether wonderful.
What’s NOT: absolutely nothing whatsoever. Worth making.

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Instead of a tart being made IN a pastry shell with a rim, this one is served individually on a little pastry (pie crust) round. The ricotta filling with lightly toasted fennel seed in it, is spooned on top and the candied kumquats and their syrup are drizzled on top.

Recently we had friends over for dinner – Darci and Tim and Cherrie and Bud. Darci brought dessert, this luscious kumquat tart that wasn’t exactly a tart, but OH was it ever delicious! She has a kumquat tree that provides prodigious quantities, so she’s always on the lookout for something new to do with them. She found the original recipe at epicurious. But the recipe came from a 2003 Gourmet magazine issue. She’s made this several times, and because she had some difficulty slicing the traditional tart style in her early iterations, she changed the method a little bit and made pastry rounds from Trader Joe’s pie crust dough (in a box). She baked the rounds on parchment, allowed them to cool, then when we were ready for dessert she put a round on each plate, scooped the fennel-scented ricotta filling/sauce on top, then spooned the candied kumquats on top of that. Oh my goodness, was it ever good. She candied the kumquats the day before, and the ricotta mixture is really easy to make – a little sour cream, the toasted & ground fennel seeds and that’s it.

My little kumquat tree (that lives in a pot on our patio) produces maybe 200 kumquats a year, and if I used them all in this recipe, I’d still have some left over. I still have some fruit on my tree, but not nearly enough to make this, however. You could use oranges in this recipe, or tangerines, I think, although you wouldn’t need quite as much sugar in the candy part. They just wouldn’t be quite as cute as the tiny coins of kumquats. But the taste would be just about the same. And, this dessert is really very easy to make – once you have the kumquats candied – they do take some time to half and de-seed. That’s the most time consuming part.

What’s GOOD: the sweet and tart of the kumquats for sure, and the light fennel scent in the ricotta sauce. And I just loved the crust – as I ate it I thought it tasted almost like shortbread, but of course it wasn’t, it was a kind of a thick pie crust. Altogether delicious.
What’s NOT: only the tedious part of de-seeding the kumquats. A bit of a nuisance, but worth it.

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The cobbler part isn’t quite visible there under the small mountain of whipped cream. But it’s there. And the cream – well, it’s enhanced with some peach brandy. For me, though, it was the almond flavoring in the peach part that just “made” this.

The other day I asked my DH, on one of his trips to Costco, if he’d try to find a box of the I AM RIPE brand of peaches. Since peaches are officially in season, I hoped they’d have some, as I’ve been very, very happy with the taste of them the last two summers. Indeed, they did, and 2 days later those peaches were at their peak of ripeness.  Last summer I made a great peach crisp. And I could have used that recipe again, but after reading something about this one online somewhere, I had decided I wanted to try it because of the almond flavoring in it. This one is from the Silver Palate Cookbook 25th Anniversary Edition’>Silver Palate Cookbook, one of my old standby favorite cookbooks. I’d never made this version. In fact, I’d never even looked at the recipe, I don’t think.

This version uses one of the techniques I like with peaches – baking the peach portion for awhile before adding the biscuit/cobbler part. The sliced peaches are combined in a greased baking dish (don’t use the juices you’ll make while you’re peeling and slicing them – they will create enough juice on their own – they don’t need more!) with sugar, lemon juice zest and some almond flavoring. I used more almond than the recipe called for – I like almond flavoring. If you’re not-so enamored, cut the almond extract in half and it will be just subtle.

While the peaches were baking I whipped up the biscuit dough. Easy enough to make. The dough is spooned onto the hot peaches, sprinkled with granulated sugar and baked for about 15+ minutes, just until the biscuits were getting golden brown. They sat out for about an hour or so and I served the cobbler warm with the whipped cream. Yum.

What’s GOOD: the almond flavoring in the peaches. I really liked that. Also the peaches were at perfect ripeness, so they were exceedingly juice and sweet. I cut down the sugar just a little bit because of that. I really enjoyed the peach whipped cream too. I had Peach Pucker Schnapps in my liquor cupboard (something I’ve had around for about 4-5 years and rarely use) and it worked perfectly in this. But because it’s tart, not sweet, I added some powdered sugar. I also think some Amaretto would be lovely in the whipped cream too, in the event you don’t have any peach brandy (I don’t). Try to eat this up in one sitting (see below).

What’s NOT: we didn’t have tons of left overs, actually because we invited friends to come over for dessert that first night. So, the next night the biscuit part was quite leaden. I had removed them from the peaches and placed them on a piece of plastic wrap, right on top of the peach part so they wouldn’t get any more soggy, but even heating them up in the microwave a little bit they were kind of heavy. The peaches were VERY juicy. I need to remember next time to sprinkle just a little bit of cornstarch in the peaches before they bake. Not that it doesn’t taste good – it does – but I think ripe peaches just tend to juice-up a lot.

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