Peach Crisp Crumble

Crumbles or crisps are one of my favourite desserts - maybe it's because they're so healthy? Hmmm... Anyway, I've never really known the difference between a crumble and a crisp as I've always thought of crisps as an American thing. A good explanation of the difference can be found here. Crisps seem to include rolled oats, whereas crumbles are just butter rubbed into sugar and flour. I'm defintely a crisp girl then.

I'm always on the lookout for a good crisp recipe and I finally found one at taste.com.au There are a couple of things that make this crisp really tasty - the first is in the ingredients, the second I did by mistake.

The recipe calls for brown sugar instead of white sugar and it adds a depth of flavour when the sugar caramelises. The second thing is to use softened butter instead of chilled butter. Living in a warm climate such as Sydney, I forgot to chill the butter and left it sitting on the counter so that it softened up. I decided to rub the butter into the ingredients anyway - the outcome was large clusters of muesli and buttery flour instead of fine breadcrumbs - which turn into clusters of crunchy goodness when cooked - yum!! I don't think I'll ever chill my butter again when it comes to crisps.

A few other adaptations that I made to the original recipe was that I used peaches as I had them on hand; I used muesli that had dried fruit (raisins, cranberries, dates) and coconut in with rolled oats. And while this is a peach crisp, I have made this same recipe with apples and strawberries - I would never have thought that warmed strawberries could taste so good!

Peach Crisp

Adapted from taste.com.au

1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
100g softened butter

3/4 cup fruit muesli
2-3 ripe peaches, cut into pieces
Vanilla ice-cream or cream, to serve

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Combine the flour, sugar and muesli in a bowl.
2. Use your fingertips to rub the butter into the flour mixture until the butter is rubbed evenly through the ingredients.

3. Place the chopped peaches into a 6-cup capacity ovenproof dish. Scatter the muesli mixture evenly over the peaches.

4. Bake in oven for 20-25 minutes or until golden. Spoon the peach crisp into serving bowls. Serve with cream or ice-cream.

Baking Baklava

Baklava is one of those desserts that seem like they'll take a long time to make for little reward - how wrong you would be!

I recently made baklava and it was so easy that I would encourage you to give it a go. In a nutshell (pun intended ;)) all you do is chop some nuts, butter up some phyllo pastry (layer upon layer upon layer) then pour over a syrup that only takes a few minutes to create. The crispy, flaky pastry, the crunchy nuts and sweet, runny syrup were so tasty that I couldn't stop reaching for the little diamond-shaped treats - very dangerous!

I used this recipe here, who found the recipe here, but used mixed nuts and left out the orange and lemon peel as I didn't have them on hand. I also halved the recipe below to avoid total sugar overload. All in all, it was a great little treat that I'll make again when the occasion calls for it.

Ingredients:

Adapted from Closet Cooking and Use Real Butter

4 cups mixed nuts (chopped)

1/2 cup sugar

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 cup butter (melted)

1 pound phyllo pastry (thawed)

3/4 cup water

1/2 cup sugar

1 stick cinnamon

3/4 cup honey

Directions:

1. Mix the nuts, sugar and cinnamon in a bowl.

2. Brush the bottom of a 9x13 inch pan with butter.

3. Brush butter onto the top of a sheet of the phyllo dough and place the sheet into the pan. Repeat until there are 8 sheets in the pan.

4. Sprinkle 1/3 of the nut mixture onto the phyllo in the pan.

5. Brush butter onto the top of a sheet of the phyllo dough and place the sheet into the pan. Repeat until there are 2 sheets on top of the nut mixture.

6. Sprinkle 1/3 of the nut mixture onto the phyllo in the pan.

7. Brush butter onto the top of a sheet of the phyllo dough and place the sheet into the pan. Repeat until there are 2 sheets on top of the nut mixture.

8. Sprinkle 1/3 of the nut mixture onto the phyllo in the pan.

9. Brush butter onto the top of a sheet of the phyllo dough and place the sheet into the pan. Repeat until there are 8 sheets on top of the nut mixture.

10. Slice the baklava with a sharp knife.

11. Bake in a preheated 180C oven until golden brown on top, about 25-35 minutes.

12. Bring the water, sugar and cinnamon to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

13. Add the honey and simmer for 2 minutes.

14. Remove the cinnamon from the syrup.

15. Pour the syrup over the baklava when it comes out of the oven.

16. Let the baklava cool for a few hours.

Mmmolten Chocolate Pudding

This is a super easy molten chocolate pudding from Bill Grainger's Series 2 DVD. The picture doesn't really do it justice, but it was everything you want in a chocolate pudding - super chocolatey but not too sweet - it only has 4 tablespoons of sugar in it.

I didn't quite achieve the molten inside as I cooked it too long but I actually prefer it cooked through. I served this with whipped cream which cut through the richness and made for a perfect dessert that was really easy to make.

Bill Grainger’s Molten Chocolate Puddings

1. Preheat oven to 220 degrees celcius.

2. Melt 125gm dark chocolate and 125gm butter in a bowl over hot water.

3. Beat 2 eggs and 2 egg yolks in bowl with 4 TBSP caster sugar until pale and fluffy.

4. Pour hot chocolate into eggs and whisk until combined.

5. Sift in 2 tsp flour and fold through.

6. Grease 4 ramekins and dust with cocoa. Fill to ¾ full.

7. Bake 10 minutes, centre should be gooey. Bake longer if you want a firmer centre.