Peach Puzzle

A couple of years ago, I discovered this recipe in America's Best Lost Recipes.  I love peaches and I love puzzles so it seemed a no-brainer to bake this dessert.

Basically,  in a pie plate, a layer of  whole peaches is drizzled with a brown sugar syrup and topped with a biscuit topping.  Pretty standard ingredients and pretty standard assembly.  But here's the fun part:  in the center of the pie plate, you put a custard cup upside down and arrange the peaches around it.

Then you drizzle the syrup onto the peaches and top with the biscuit topping.

When it comes out of the oven, it cools on a rack for 30 minutes and then you flip it over onto a large, rimmed plate.  Voila!  A lot of the syrup has been sucked into the custard cup and can be used to drizzle over the whole dessert!  Ice cream is essential.  The room goes quiet when people eat this!

Cooling on the rack

Flipped over and beautiful!

With ice cream!

Here's the recipe (I've modified the directions just a bit):

Make the syrup by combining the following ingredients in a small saucepan and heating until the sugar dissolves and the butter melts:

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup water

2 Tbsp. butter

1/2 tsp. vanilla

1/8 tsp. salt

Prepare the peaches.  Place a custard cup upside down in a 9" pie plate.  Peel 7 whole peaches (dip them in boiling water for 30 seconds and the peels will come off very easily).  Cut the peaches in half and remove the pits.  Arrange around the custard cup.

Pour the warm syrup over the peaches.

Make the dough.

Mix together:

1 1/4 cup flour

2 Tbsp. sugar

1 Tbsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

Grate and stir in:  5 Tbsp. frozen butter.  

Add:  6 Tbsp. milk

Stir with a fork, then pat into a 9" circle.  Place the dough on top of the peaches--don't attach the dough to the edge of the pie plate.  If you'd like to cut a circle of dough out of the center where the cup is and add it to the edges, that will be fine.  (I also think your favorite shortcake/biscuit dough would work fine here.)

Place on a baking sheet.

Bake at 400 degrees for 25 - 30 minutes, until the top is golden.

Remove from the oven and put the pie plate on a rack to cool for 30 minutes.

Here's the magical part:  Place a large, rimmed plate on top of the pie plate and quickly invert the peach puzzle onto the plate.  Cut into 7 wedges.  Top with ice cream and spoon syrup over the whole lovely-tasting, summery, peach puzzle.  Yum!!