My mum received a small basket of beautiful yellow peaches recently and very generously shared some with me. I decided to try poaching them and incorporating them into a dessert. The result was this lovely golden brown frangipane tart, which is really just a variation of this tart.

I loved the taste and texture of the puffed up frangipane, which went really well with the wonderfully plump and moist poached peaches.

I was inspired to bake this tart after seeing the lovely photo in Baking Illustrated. The pears were poached in sugar syrup with a cinnamon stick and black pepper corns.

The smell of the baked frangipane was wonderful. The only problem I had was that the pears were still very firm despite having been left to ripen on the counter for 5 days. I’ll have to plan way ahead the next time.

Usually I like my cheesecake plain and simple. Appropriate amount of Digestive biscuit crust accompanied by smooth, thick and cream cheesy batter on top of that. No Oreos in the crust or batter and most definitely no blueberry topping.

On a wimp, I decided to try a variation involving chocolate. After all, who can say no to chocolate? I saved about 1/2 cup of cheesecake batter, mixed in some cocoa powder and swirled it into the plain batter with a knife.

I liked this version so much that I made it again for my parents’ wedding anniversary.