Thursday, February 10, 2005

An excellent quick dessert



For when you've been eating your dinner while watching the cooking channel and getting that feeling of "I've just gotta have dessert!". But, when you're trying to be sensible and not overindulge during the week, what can you do? Well, it's pretty easy in my house right now - we don't keep chocolate or biscuits in the house (a wise move, in my opinion), but it's summer and we have lots of fresh fruit.
Grilled fresh stone fruit are the taste of summer to me. The grilling softens it and intensifies the flavour and juices. When it's sprinkled with some sugar it caramelises and makes a little toffee sauce. And then when you add some nuts, it makes something amazing.
I found me a perfectly ripe peach, which split itself into two and gave up its pip without any argument. I initially filled the cavity with chopped walnuts and sprinkled sugar over the top, but after putting it under the griller I realised the walnuts were starting to burn before the sugar had started melting. Oops! So I attempted peach surgery with a fork, which was a failure. Instead I dived in with my fingers and naturally burnt them (it'll be a long time before I get asbestos fingers). So, my sugar caramelised and I removed the peaches and sprinkled them with the walnuts - which had turned into gorgeous walnut brittle from the bits of sugar that melted around before I removed them.
It was the perfect quick, 'healthy' dessert. In fact, it was so good I actually licked my plate clean! (shhh don't tell anyone).

2 comments:

  1. I love this idea! Easy but delicious. And on top of your excellent dessert idea getting me hungry, you make me jealous when you say it's summer there now. :-) You're right---it's the perfect time for a dessert like this.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you! Yes, it is summer, but we're having quite a cool one down here; sure there are days over 35 degrees, but really not as many as is usual over summer, and far more cool cloudy days than is usual.

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.