Today is the first free day I’ve had in a long while to try something new. I’d bought some Israeli white peaches a week ago, but found them to be sadly lacking in flavour. I decided to poach them first before they went bad and consider what to do with them later since I was short on time last week.

Having spent way too much time in the kitchen the last few weeks, I couldn’t bring myself to embark on another time-consuming project and decided to make danishes with the poached peaches and store bought puff pastry.

The puff pastry looked pretty enough, but was slightly undercooked on the bottom, even though I’d baked it longer than the duration recommended on the packaging. Still, the peaches were tender and full of cinnamon flavour. I think I’ll try them with some Dreyer’s vanilla ice cream tomorrow!

Poached Peaches

Ingredients
2 1/2 cups water
1 cup sugar
2 cinnamon sticks (use 1 stick if you prefer a milder cinnamon flavour)
5 cloves
5 pepper corns

Fresh peaches, halved and pitted (there is no need to peel the peaches)

Directions
1. Place the water, sugar, cinnamon sticks, cloves and pepper corns in a large sauce pan. Make sure that the pan is large enough so that all the peach halves can be immersed in the sugar syrup.
2. Bring the sugar syrup to boil. Reduce the heat and bring to a gentle simmer.
3. Poach the peaches in the simmering sugar syrup for approximately 10 - 15 minutes, until the peaches are tender and translucent.
4. Remove the peaches from the sauce pan with a slotted spoon.
5. Remove the skin from the poached peaches. The skins should slide off very easily.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 7th, 2007 at 8:06 pm and is filed under Pies & Tarts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.