Baked peaches with thyme and ice cream

Peaches are long gone, but this dessert will be staying. I saw it on Scarlet Pippin, but the original recipe seems to be by Gordon Ramsay. And, then, I tweaked it a bit more…  hopefully, it will become a viral dish because it an ideal dessert for a Summer dinner.

Baked peaches

Ingredients 

• 4 whole white peaches.
• 50g icing sugar, 50g caster sugar (I just used 100 of sugarcane sugar)
• 1 vanilla pod
• 25 unsalted butter, melted
• 1-2 teaspoons Cointreau or Grand Mariner (I used prune Schnapps)
• 1 teaspoon of fresh thyme leaves (stripped from stalk)

Method

Mix the icing and caster sugar together and roll fruits in them to coat. Sit peaches in a shallow ovenproof dish. Mix the vanilla seeds with the melted butter and trickle over the peaches.

Bake the peaches uncovered at 190 oC for 5 mins. Remove and spoon the caramelised liquid that has formed in the dish back over the peaches. Return to the oven to bake for 10 mins (spooning over the juices a few more times).

About 5 mins before the peaches are ready, spoon over the liqueur and sprinkle over the thyme. Remove when ready and allow to cool until warm.

Thyme ice-cream

Ingredients

• 250ml of creamy milk
• 250ml double cream
• 3 sprigs of fresh thyme (OR two strands of saffron OR two sticks of cinnamon)
• 6 free range egg yolks
• 90g caster sugar

Methods

Heat the milk and cream in a large saucepan until the liquid starts to creep up the sides of the pan (i.e. boil). Then stir in the thyme sprigs, remove from the heat and leave to cool.

Put the yolks and the sugar in a large bowl and whisk until thick and creamy (ideally with an electric whisk).

Reheat the milk and cream mixture and, when the mixture rises up again, pour into the yolk mixture whilst slowly mixing. Whist until well blended. Strain back into the pan through a sieve (discard the thyme). On the lowest possible heat, stir until the mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon. Cool the custard, stirring occasionally to stop a skin forming. Churn in an electric ice-cream maker if you have such things, or otherwise take out of the freezer to stir regularly as it starts to freeze.