I think the peaches may have won. In my grand plans for expanding the types of fruit I put up in the summer I bought a half bushel of peaches last week. The peaches were juicy, fragrant, sweet, local North Carolina freestone varieties which meant I had to peel and freeze them right away.
No big deal, I thought. I'll just set up my supplies in the kitchen the night before and dunk them in boiling water to remove the peel.
Uh huh. Remember the Yiddish proverb, "man plans, God laughs"? Might as well have embroidered it on a banner and hung it up for that day. The hot water bath trick? Apparently it only works on the very ripe peaches. The burst of energy I had in the morning? It only lasted until noon but the baby's content mood expired even earlier, like 10am.
Which means I spent all day in three different spurts dunking, peeling, pitting, chopping, freezing - repeat. More than 25lbs of peaches. Did I mention I almost bought two boxes?
Thankfully I did finish and whoah what a finish. The boys ate all the fresh peaches they could fit in their bellies and the baby wasn't far behind. The last batch of peeled peaches were reserved for this peach crumble.
After all that work you better believe I was going for a sweet reward at the end.
I'm very sorry that I'm pulling a "there's no recipe for this I threw it together" card. I find nearly impossible to pinpoint recipes for the filling portions of crumbles, crisps and cobblers. I just added enough sugar to taste, 3-4 tablespoons of corn starch, two pinches of salt and a heavy pinch of cinnamon. There were enough peaches to fill the bottom of a 9x13x2" pyrex baking pan.
The peaches give off plenty of juice. But the topping, oh the crumble topping. The crumble topping is a recipe I found on Smitten Kitchen a while back and has been my favorite ever since. It bakes up into a shortbread like topping that I'm tempted to bake alone on a cookie sheet and keep around for mixing into vanilla ice cream. Oops, did I just say that out loud?
Yup, it's all about the topping. If you don't have raw sugar around you can substitute brown sugar or just use granulated sugar for the whole amount. Aside from the amazing taste, this crumble topping uses melted butter which means no cutting in butter. Simple as all get out.
As I was pulling the crumble out of the oven I smiled at the benefit of posting recipes on a blog.
I get to pull a Paula Deen and serve myself a "preview taste" with absolutely no guilt. You know, for my blog cred and all that.
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