I can’t resist a recipe that promises an odd outcome. Before I came across this oddity in the excellent A Boat A Whale and a Walrus a collection of recipes and stories from restaurants on the other side of the country that I’m now extra sad I haven’t visited (yet! Maybe in 5 or 18 years or so?) I understood cobblers to be more or less baked fruit with a soft cake batter or a soft cookie while crisps had clusters of oatmeal and sometimes nutty cookie crumbs that gave them their namesake texture. [Let’s save comparisons with crumbles grunts fools pandowdys sonkers bettys buckles and slabs for another delicious day.] Crisps weren’t soft; cobblers weren’t crunchy.
| Channel | Publish Date | Thumbnail & View Count | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|
 FOX 13 News Utah | 2020-08-31 19:18:13 |  810 Views |
Smith's Chef Jeff's Crispy Peach Crumble Recipe
But not this one. Here in the technique that author and chef Renee Erickson says she learned from the original owner of one of her restaurants The Boat Street Café a fairly simple batter of flour/butter/sugar/milk is beaten longer than a good cake recipe would normally recommend spread thinly over unpeeled peaches dressed only with lemon zest and juice—no thickeners spices or sugar—topped with more sugar then sprinkled with hot water. In the oven the batter develops a crispy lid that’s as fun to impatiently tap through as the best crème brûlée.
It’s also a bit of a mess beneath the surface the gurgling sloppy summer kind. The peaches will slide around until they’ve cooled a bit and thickened and you’ll need to wait 30 minutes for that to happen or forgo any complaints about the texture. Sure you can add thickener but I’ve never liked the way it mutes the flavor of baked stone fruits. Because the topping is a bit sweet this is better with a drizzle of cold cream or a dollop of crème fraîche than with the usual scoop of vanilla ice cream or sweetened whipped cream. But overall this was an unmitigated hit which should come as no surprise since it’s late August and the New York peaches this year are the best I’ve had north of South Carolina and this offers all the deliciousness of a classic peach pie—sweet sunken fruit a flaky buttery topping—with about 1/10 of the work.
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