Just one last peach dish—Buttermilk Peach Pudding a good sayonara to summer

Pretty sneaky of Kroger to run a great grocery store ad on peaches. Pretty sneaky of Southern Living’s fall issue to feature a last-blast of a peach recipe. Here we are in apple season with all of our peach harvest finished long ago and turning out apple desserts, salads, entrees right and left. What pops back up to tempt us? Peaches, that summer delicacy that is so tough to leave behind.

So we hadn’t bidden sayonara to peaches after all. Buttermilk Peach Pudding was not to be resisted, even though it seemed slightly out of order in the midst of all the fall finery. I was very happy to have an excuse to prepare a dish with peaches on just one more occasion.

Buttermilk Peach Pudding cooks up with a texture like bread pudding. As the photo above shows, I also stirred in a few fresh blueberries along with the peaches to give it a little more color. The addition of buttermilk may sound off-putting calorie-wise, but I used my age-old substitute of 3 teaspoons vinegar poured into a one-cup measure plus whatever amount of skim milk is necessary to fill the cup up to the 1-cup line. Stir and let this sit on the counter for about five minutes; you’ll have your buttermilk substitute. Three tablespoons of vinegar into the 1-cup measure filled with milk has the same effect.

Sitting down the baking dish into a roasting pan filled with 1-inch of water while the pudding cooks helps keep the pudding moist for serving. We served it with sugar-free whipped topping, although sugar-free vanilla ice cream would work great as well.

Just one more peach recipe, my heart had pled as summer seeped out the door. My wish was realized; it was a lovely period to put at the end of summer’s sentence.

Peach Buttermilk Pudding

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon salt (or salt substitute)

1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

3 1/2 peaches, peeled and coarsely chopped (about 1 1/2 pounds)

1 cup buttermilk (can also be made by filling a 1-cup measure with 3 teaspoons white vinegar and then adding skim milk to reach the 1-cup line)

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 cups sugar(or sugar substitute)

3 large eggs (or 3/4 cup egg substitute)

2 ripe peaches, peeled and sliced (about 1 pound)

vanilla ice cream or whipped topping

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift together first 7 ingredients; sift again. Process chopped peaches in a food processor or blender until they are smooth. (should make about 2 cups puree). Stir in buttermilk. Beat butter and sugar at high speed with a heavy-duty electric stand mixer until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until blended after each addition. Add peach mixture; beat until well-blened. Layer sliced peaches in a greased 13-inch-by-9-inch pan. Fold flour mixture into butter mixture. Pour batter over sliced peaches in pan. Place pan in a large roasting pan and add boiling water to roasting pan to a depth of 1 inch. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes or until set. Pudding still will be moist. Serve warm or cold with ice cream. Makes 8-10 servings.

What could be more summery than this delicious Peach-Blueberry Pie?

Just doesn’t get any more delicious—Peach- Blueberry Pie, combining the best of the summer garden—fresh peaches and blueberries. Preparing this essence-of-summer recipe, from my cookbook, Way Back in the Country Garden, has become a summer ritual for me. Thank you, ladies of Northlake Baptist Church in my hometown of Garland, TX, for tossing your summer book club covered-dish event featuring my book and for giving me an excuse to prepare this wonder again.

About a month ago I had spoken at a women’s banquet at this church; members had scheduled one of their summer book reviews to feature my book. Attendees were to consider bringing a dish featured in the Country Garden pages. What a treat for me to arrive at host Cindy Jones’ home and find on the counter dishes of Cheese Grits Casserole, Chicken Spaghetti, Pecan Pie Muffins, Strawberry Pretzel Salad, Garden Slaw, and others that sprang straight from the cookbook’s pages.

After dinner participants discussed such questions as: What particular food reminds you of your childhood? What are special or unusual traditions shared by your family? What is one of your favorite memories of your grandparents or great-grandparents? What do you most hope to share with future generations in your family? This was a terrific idea for a party activity and brought tales that alternated between the side-splitting and the tear-prompting. Wonderful evening.

When considering what I personally would bring to the covered dish, I didn’t have to look any further than to our backyard garden and the peach trees still bringing forth their gorgeous yield. Many people wouldn’t imagine combining peaches with blueberries, but I remember that the original recipe suggested peach/blackberry and peach/raspberry combinations as alternatives to this one. The crust was my time-honored Easy Pie Crust featured in my first cookbook, Way Back in the Country. It’s a never-fail recipe and easy enough for a young cook to make as his or her first pie crust (which is how it was first introduced in our house—as a summer learning activity when our daughter was young.)

Hubby almost wept when he saw this lattice-crust pie being toted out the door for the party. “Please try to bring home just one slice,” he sniffed piteously. Lucky him; a few slices were left. He was happy to see me return, but he looked past me to see that, thankfully, some pie indeed remained under the clear plastic pie-plate cover. He was grateful indeed!

Peach-Blueberry Pie

1 cup sugar (or sugar substitute)

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon ground allspice

3 cups sliced peeled fresh peaches

1 cup fresh blueberries

1 tablespoon butter

pastry for double-crust pie (9-inch pie pan)

milk

cinnamon

sugar

In a bowl combine sugar, flour, cinnamon, and allspice. Add the peaches and blueberries; toss gently. Line pie plate with bottom crust; add the filling. Dot with butter. Top with a lattice crust. Brush crust with milk; sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Bake at 400 degrees for 40-45 minutes or until crust is golden brown and filling is bubbly. Cool completely. Serves 6-8.

Too many recipes left at the end of the fruit supply? Roadside produce stands are the answer

The old saying, "Why do I have so much month left at the end of the money?", could be applied to where we are season-wise right now.

I'm thinking (and mourning), "Why do I have so many peach recipes left at the end of my summer?"

The peaches long ago left our trees; the branches, though still green and leafy, are sadly bare of fruit and will remain that way until next June.

And yet my recipe file still brims with untried recipes that didn't get brought to life before the peach crop faded away. One of those was an all-time winner, "Peach-Blueberry Pie", which combines two of my favorite fruit in all the world. It appears in my new cookbook, Way Back in the Country Garden, but truthfully, I don't think I prepared it all last summer or maybe even the summer before. It's the absolute greatest, but yet another year was breezing by without it materializing.

Enter Ham's Orchard. Until a few weeks ago I probably was the only North Texan alive who didn't know about this fun little spot, just east of Terrell off Highway 80. A combination roadside market/fudgery/burger stand, Ham's is best-known for its many varieties of peaches produced from the massive orchard adjacent to the indoor produce stop. A few weeks beforehand my daughter and her husband had been introduced to Ham's and had suggested we take a Sunday-afternoon drive to tour it as well. I knew Ham's would have to be special to entice my daughter, who is very great with a child (did I say very?) and desperately seeks to avoid crowds, to brave Ham's crowded aisles to show us this haven of goodies.

Perhaps Ham's best draws are the fresh homemade peach ice cream and peach shakes that are wildly popular with customers, especially on extremely hot Texas summer afternoons. Other delicacies are the homemade peach cobblers and ready-prepared meals that are sold ready to be popped into the oven. On the Sunday afternoon we stopped in, customers swarmed around like bees after honey. I saw my opportunity to replenish my peach supply and give life to my "Peach-Blueberry Pie" after all.

With a small sack of some of Ham's finest tucked under my arm, I resisted the temptation for a soft-serve peach ice cream cone and instead envisioned my upcoming pie that soon would have intermingled morsels of peaches and blueberries bubbling through the squares in the lattice-topped crust. (I had a bag of blueberries left from an earlier visit to the Chickasaw Nation farmer's market, so now with the peaches I was in business.)

Happily, that dream was soon realized. Nobody we saw departing Ham's slurping peach shakes or licking peach cones on that Sunday afternoon had anything near the smiles on our faces that resulted from the first bite of my upcoming warm homemade Peach-Blueberry Pie.

Yay! I didn't have to wait another year to enjoy it after all.

Peach-Blueberry Pie

1 cup sugar (I use sugar substitute)

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon ground allspice

3 cups sliced peeled fresh peaches

1 cup fresh blueberries

1 tablespoon butter (I use unsalted, not margarine)

pastry for double-crust pie (9 inches)

milk (I use skim milk)

cinnamon

a "little" extra sugar to mix with the cinnamon

In a bowl combine sugar, flour, cinnamon, and allspice. Add the peaches and blueberries; toss gently. Line pie plate with bottom crust; add the filling. Dot with butter. Top with a lattice crust. Brush crust with milk; sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Bake at 400 degrees for 40-45 minutes or until crust is golden brown and filing is bubbly. Cool completely. Frozen fruit may be used if it is thawed and well-drained. Serves 6-8.