roasted peaches with gluten free crisp and creme fraiche

When I plan a meal, I have several check points I go through. I want to be sure that the meal is comprised of ingredients from the current season, and that on a whole, the meal feels cohesive from start to finish. If we are having friends join us, I also try to plan a dessert of some sort. This is usually my favorite part of the meal and the item I spend the most time thinking about. I’m a self diagnosed sugar fiend, so naturally this area excites me the most.

Most often, I like to dream up desserts that have several elements and can take hours, but when we are planning a meal for the middle of the week that doesn’t always work out very well. Unless we just decide to forgo dinner altogether and serve dessert alone, I better think of something a little more speedy.

During the summer, I tend toward the natural bounty of fruit that needs little done to it, if anything at all. Fresh peaches, while amazing in cobblers and crisps, can be divine all by themselves and as far as I’m concerned, make an excellent dessert. However, roasting them for a bit and then topping them a sprinkle of crisp and a dollop of creme fraiche won’t make anyone I know turn up their nose.

There is a lesson to be learned in this recipe: dessert does not have to take hours to be awesome. I’m going to repeat that to myself: dessert does not have to take hours to be awesome. This is a great mantra for me to remember. Too often I jump right to something unnecessarily complicated. Maybe after repeating this to myself a few hundred times I’ll think more simply the next time I want to make a dessert that takes three days.

This dish is just as versatile as it is quick. You can use whatever fruit is available at your farmers market, in fact I think apricots would be delicious here, so would plums or nectarines. The crisp topping can be frozen and used to stir into yogurt or crumbled onto pies, I also think it could be a great base for a granola too.

Because I was baking for a crowd, I made this recipe gluten free. I think you can convert it to regular ingredients with absolutely no problems at all. To do this, just use regular oats and regular all purpose flour.

roasted peaches with gluten free crisp and creme fraiche
crisp recipe adapted from here
serves 12

Ingredients: 

• 6 medium peaches, cut in half, seed removed
• 7 1/2 ounce container of creme fraiche
• 1 1/4 cup gluten free rolled oats
• 1/2 cup all purpose gluten free baking flour
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 ounces (6 tablespoons) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
• brown sugar

Prepartion: 

Make the crisp

1. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Cover a rimmed baking sheet in parchment paper.
2. Put the oats, flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt into the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until the ingredients are combined. Add the butter and pulse until the butter chunks are the size of peas and the mixture begins to look like wet sand.
3. Dump the ingredients on the parchment lined baking sheet and spread out evenly. Bake for about 10 minutes, then rotate the pan front to back and bake for another 5-7 minutes until the mixture begins to brown.
4. Remove from the oven and cool. Set aside.
5. Increase the oven temperature to 375 degrees and place the peach halves in a 9×13 baking dish. Sprinkle the tops of the peaches with a little brown sugar and bake, uncovered for about 30 minutes or until they are soft and the skins are beginning to wrinkle. Let cool for 10 minutes.
6. Top each peach half with a sprinkle of crisp and a dollop of creme fraiche. Enjoy immediately with a fork and knife.

August 12, 2012. Tags: dessert, fruit crisp, gluten free, peach, quick and easy, roasting, summer. baking, dessert, fruit, gluten free, quick and easy, summer, vegetarian.