A Plate Full

I love peaches.  I’m so happy when they come into season, and Colorado peaches are truly wonderful.  I’ve been known to stand over the sink eating them with the juice running down my arm and a blissful look on my face.  I buy pounds at a time, trying to get them in varying degrees of ripeness so that I always have a perfectly ripe peach to scarf down.  What?  They’re only here for a short time, you need to eat them almost every day.  As much fun as eating them over the sink is, I’m also always looking for things to do with them or put them into.  So when I stumbled upon this recipe I knew I had to try it.

I put it all together, baked it off, and impatiently waited for it to cool to cut into it.  My first impression?  Not so much.  The streusel on the top seemed a bit too crunchy, and it was a little too soft for my taste inside.  Almost like it wasn’t set enough, but I knew that I had baked it for more than the time called for.  The flavor seemed a bit muted and I was disappointed.  I was hoping for a slam dunk that I could rave about.  Oh well, I put it in the refrigerator, not even covered, and thought I’d deal with it the next day.  

This morning, I pulled the pie out of the fridge, and took another look.  It looked like the filling had set, you could see where it had slid a bit the evening before when it was cut, but nothing new had moved.  In fact, when I took a spoon and scooped that part away the rest remained in place.  So I cut into it.  The top was still crunchy, and the interior soft but firm enough to cut and remove without it slumping off the side or falling apart.  I took a small bite, and here’s the thing….it’s great cold.  I love this pie cold.  The flavors have intensified and melded and I don’t want to share.  Eating this pie cold from the fridge is like having cake for breakfast, it feels a little wrong but it’s so good you don’t care.  It’s old fashioned goodness.  It’s sitting on the back porch on a hot evening watching the fireflies coming out, hearing the mothers calling the little kids in for the night, eating cold peach pie, deep sigh good.  Some things you have to wait for.  

Fresh Peach Cream Pie

3/4 cup of sugar
2 tablespoons all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup of creme fraiche or sour cream
1 egg, beaten
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
2-1/2 cups sliced peaches
1 unbaked pie shell

Topping:
1/3 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup of softened butter

Heat your oven to 400. Mix the sugar, flour and salt together. Add the creme fraiche, egg, extracts and mix throughly. Gently stir in the peaches and pour into the unbaked pie shell. Bake for 15 minutes. Lower the oven to 350 and bake for 30 minutes or until the filling is set (it will be jiggly, but dry on top). Remove from oven and raise the oven temp. back to 400. Mix the topping together and sprinkle over the top and bake until golden brown, approximately 10 to 15 minutes. Let cool, and refrigerate.

Notes: To make the filling set more firmly, I’d add another egg and reduce the cream by 2 tablespoons. The topping gets very crunchy and I think I had it too thick in places making it difficult to cut. I’d sprinkle it more evenly and possibly even reduce the amount used so it would just dot the top rather than cover it. Make it the day before you want to eat it, it takes time to chill, at the very least 8 hours.

Recipe adapted from Cat Burner’s grandma on AllRecipes.com