Random Recipe: Peach and vanilla crumble with a white chocolate and pecan crisp

  This is possibly the greatest crumble recipe of all time. I know it may seem like braggine ranting on about something I made myself but in this case it has to be forgiven because it's so very true. I came up with this recipe at about 2.30AM last night (all my recipe ideas come to me really late at night for some reason) and I couldn't wait to try it out today. I was really unsure if the white chocolate would work in the crumble bit (I thought it might just melt into a gooey mess in the oven) but happily it worked better than I even hoped for. The edges of the chunks actually caramelized while the middle was all melty deliciousness, can you imagine how good that is! Note, this is not for the faint hearted.

Serves 8

Ingredients;

                   200g plain flour

                   75g butter (at room temperature)

                   3-4 tbs brown sugar (I used 3 tbs and 1 tbs Stevia powder) for the filling, 1 tbs for the crumble

                   1 tsp baking powder

                   1/2 tsp cinnamon

                   1 tsp vanilla essence

                   1 tbs lemon juice

                   2 punnets of ripe peaches (around 10)

                   150g pecans 

                   200g good quality cooking white chocolate

                   1 scant cup water

                    

To make;

- Set your oven to 180 to preheat.

- Halve and de-stone your peaches and lay out in a baking dish.

- Mix the vanilla, lemon and water and pour over the peaches, then sprinkle the sugar (or sugar/stevia mix) over the peaches.

- Sift your flour, cinnamon and baking powder together, then mix in 1tbs sugar.

-  Rub the softened butter into the flour mix with your fingers until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. 

- Chop the chocolate, leaving lots of big chunks and roughly break the peacans with your hands.

- Add the pecans and chocolate chunks to the flour mixture and mix.

- Pile the flour-pecan-chocolate mix onto your peaches, spreading it out to evenly cover the fruit.

- Bake until the crumble browns nicely and serve immediately with a mound of whipped cream.

I got to try my bad-ass crumble out on some very lovely ladies I know, who came over for 'afternoon tea' (we're very sophisticated really you see)  and a good old natter, mainly about boys and dresses and other fairly predictable stuff :)

When we couldn't drink any more tea we decided to pop out to a gem of a charity shop up the road from my flat. I've become a bit disheartened with the charity shops in Cork of late because they have nearly all become flooded with mass produced rubbish selling at ridiculously prices. This one however, still has a great proportion of vintage and antique treasures compared to the usual junk so I'm really glad I discovered it. I found some amazing kitsch bits, you can't have to many shiny kitten figurines after all. I also found an amazing 60's style wind up clock.

To top our afternoon off we went a little mosey around the fabric shop where I found this lovely blue floral cotton. It's a really lovely quality for the price, I got enough for a nice full-skirted dress for 25 bucks. It's such a retro print, I'm planning to make my dream 1950's inspired dress with it. 

Today's been a great day, my boyfriend got off work early and the weather's even cleared up for a few precious moments so that I'm able to sit outside in my garden as I type this. We're planning a bbq for tomorrow evening so fingers crossed it lasts another evening. Hope you're having a  happy sunny day wherever you are too!