Peach Pudding

I’m a big fan of late night radio – perfect for an insomniac. Recently I heard an interview with Alistair Wise from the bakery Sweet Envy in Hobart here in Australia.

Alistair was talking about winter puddings, a timely topic for our current chilly Southern Hemisphere weather.

Alistair gave a favourite recipe, off the cuff, to Philip Clark, the presenter of Night Life, a national nightly radio program. He called it ”Apple Novel“ – a simple pudding made with apples, poaching liquid and a butter/sugar/flour mix.

I jotted down the quantities and promptly set about making it a few days later. It was so easy and really sensational! I’ve made it twice with pears, and this time I made it with peaches.

Peaches are definitely out of season in Sydney. While shopping at Harris Farm Markets, I picked up some absolutely beautiful peaches from the US. I don’t know what variety they were, they were huge, sweet and very juicy!

So they made their way into my latest version of Apple Novel, now called Peach Pudding.

This dessert can be made with apples, pears or any stone fruit. And I really think you could use tinned pears, peaches or apricots – the advantage being you can use the tinned juice as the liquid in the pudding.

I used apple juice in my peach version, as the peaches didn’t need poaching.

This is such an easy recipe! You can mix it up in 5 minutes, put it into the oven and voila, your pudding is ready to eat in half an hour!

I’ve tweaked the original recipe, cutting down on the sugar somewhat.

Great recipe, easy make!

Ingredients 

3 large peaches*

100g self raising flour

50g butter cut into small pieces

100g caster sugar

250ml apple juice (or any other fruit juice)

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Cut the peaches into quarters. Lay the peach quarters into a baking dish. I used a shallow cast iron pan.

Tip the self raising flour, butter pieces and caster sugar into a bowl and rub together into a breadcrumb consistency, a bit like making pastry. Add the apple juice and roughly mix together. The mixture should look curdled, but that’s ok as you’re not looking for a cake mixture consistency.

Pour the mixture over the peaches. Put into the oven and bake for 30 minutes or until the pudding is brown on top.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool slightly. When you serve the pudding, there will be a lovely baked layer on top, and underneath soft fruit in a thick sauce.

Serve with thick cream or ice cream. Delicious served warm or even cold. And so easy!

*You could use apples or fresh pears, but you will need to poach them to cook them partially. You can then use the poaching liquid as the liquid in the batter.