Poached peaches with mascarpone, gingernut crumb & wine jelly
This beautiful and fragrant peach dish is a great dessert to have in your repertoire if you have guests coming round. It’s so simple yet tastes divine. Sweet, generous and comforting it’s all you want from a pud. To make it even easier to prepare you can omit the jelly and it will still be delicious.
Serves: 2
Difficulty: Easy
Time: 20 mins (plus 2 hours)
Ingredients
For the peaches:
- 2 ripe peaches (but still firm)
- 1 vanilla pod (split in half & seeds scraped)
- 100g golden caster sugar
- 200ml water
- 100ml sparkling wine
For the jellies: (optional)
- 150ml boiling water
- 30g caster sugar
- 250ml sparkling wine
- 2 leaves of gelatine
For the garnish:
- 4 ginger biscuits
- 2 tbsps cream cheese
- 100ml double cream
- 1 tbsp caster sugar
- 2 sprigs basil (optional)
Poached peaches with mascarpone, gingernut crumb & wine jelly
This beautiful and fragrant peach dish is a great dessert to have in your repertoire if you have guests coming round. It’s so simple yet tastes divine. Sweet, generous and comforting it’s all you want from a pud. To make it even easier to prepare you can omit the jelly and it will still be delicious.
Method
For the peaches:
- Add the sugar, water, vanilla pods and seeds to a saucepan – large enough to accommodate the 2 peaches – heat on a medium heat to a simmer.
- Cut the peaches in half and remove the stones. Place in the hot sugar syrup skin side down and heat for 2 mins before turning over and cooking for a further 2 mins.
- Remove from the heat and cover the saucepan with tin foil. Leave the peaches to steep in the syrup for at least 2 hours or preferably overnight.
- 10 mins before you are ready to serve add the sparkling wine to the peaches and syrup pan.
For the jellies:
- Add the water and sugar into a small saucepan over a low to medium heat. Stir to dissolve the sugar crystals, then raise the heat and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat, simmer for five minutes, then remove the pan from the heat.
- Pour the sparkling wine into a bowl and add the gelatine. Set aside for about five minutes, or until the leaves are soft and squidgy.
- Take out the leaves, squeeze off as much liquid as possible, and add them to the hot sugar syrup.
- Whisk until the gelatine has completely dissolved and then pour the syrup back into the bowl with the sparkling wine, whisk to combine.
- Allow to cool thoroughly, then pour into a wide shallow tray. Pop in the fridge and leave to chill for 2 – 4 hours or until the jelly has set.
- Turn the jelly out onto a chopping board and cut into 1cm cube squares.
For the garnish:
- In a bowl whisk together the cream cheese, cream and sugar until everything is incorporated.
- Crush the ginger biscuits into a rough crumb.
To plate:
- Serve two peach halves per person in a bowl and add generous spoonful’s of the syrup and sparkling wine. Add a dollop of the cream onto one of the peach halves and sprinkle with the ginger-nut crumb. Place some of the jellies around the plate and finish with half a vanilla pod and two basil leaves for decoration.
