What's Cookin' - Peach Kuchen

This last week has been crazy. The granddaughter, who started 8th grade Monday, came to stay for a few days. We went to see "Charlie St. Cloud" at the movies. So sad, but good. She loved it and, of course, Zac Efron is adorable.

I was cleaning and shopping and cooking for our little dinner party Saturday. It was fun and everything tasted good, thank God. This group is always laughing about something and we all talk at once. For dinner, we had bacon wrapped Boursin stuffed chicken breasts, smashed rosemary potatoes and roasted asparagus. I made a loaf of the soda pop bread and added about 2/3 cup of grated Parmesan cheese to the batter which made it even better. It was delicious and we've been toasting it to make sandwiches. Really tasty!

For dessert, I made Peach Kuchen. I found this recipe in an old cookbook about 15 years ago -- it is so easy to make, looks beautiful and tastes fantastic. Kuchen is the German word for cake and this particular version is a very pie-like pastry. The one special piece of equipment you need is a 9" springform pan, which is a 2-piece pan where the side snaps shut and the bottom is removable. The silver you can see underneath the kuchen is the bottom of the pan.

Peach Kuchen
serves 8

2 cups flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
8 peach halves, canned (29 oz. can, drained) or fresh
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 egg yolks
1 cup heavy whipping cream

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease 9" round springform pan.

Put flour, sugar, baking powder and salt together into mixing bowl. With pastry blender or 2 knives, cut in butter to consistency of cornmeal. Sprinkle mixture into prepared pan and press into place against sides and bottom with knuckles.

Place peaches, cut side down, over dough. Combine brown sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over peach halves. Bake for 15 minutes.

Combine egg yolks and cream in small bowl; pour over peaches and bake for an additional 30 to 35 minutes, or until browned. Cool in pan. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream, if desired.

We usually serve it with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream and it is just plain wonderful! Once when we had Hubby's sales team over for dinner, I served this dessert. One of his sales people was going on about how this is a true Kuchen and it's so delicious and her mother-in-law is German and she absolutely has to have the recipe because - and I quote - "I can't wait to serve this to that old bitch!" She brought down the house with that one!

If you bake at all, you probably have brown sugar in the pantry. One little kitchen tool that I love is my brown sugar saver. It's a little ceramic disk that you soak in water for 15 minutes, then drop in with your brown sugar to keep it moist. I always buy bags of dark brown sugar and this keeps it so soft. Until I found it, I had thrown away lots of rock hard brown sugar. This one was $3.00 from Sur la Table and it's worth every penny! Happy baking!!!