Shine Sweetly: Fresh Peach Pie

Another great late summer weekend comes to an end. At least there is peach pie in my fridge to help me through the start of the week!

But first I must share with you my great dollar store find!!! Check out the great little serving dishes for dips, salsa, nuts etc... As you can see I photographed my hummus in one of them the other day. I am a little in love with them...and they were a dollar!!!!!

Moving on....

One of the best things about living in Eastern Washington is that we have lots of farming and harvest time around here is just bliss! I have clients who bring me home grown eggplants, cherries, zucchini, pears, tomatoes, corn, lettuce....it is possibly one of the most exciting things!! Last week I had a client bring me a big box of peaches.

Me: "Thor, would you like me to make peach salsa or peach pie?"

Thor: "Well, peach pie" with an inflection of "duh" in his tone

First thing is first.. we need to peel and slice those peaches. I recommend that you play Diana Krall's "Peel me a grape" as you do this. There is a line in the song about skinning a peach and saving the fuzz for her pillow. So much easier than you would think!

For a pie you will need 8-10 peaches

Score the peach. This will give you a place to peel from.

Set peaches in boiling water for about 45 seconds.

Using a slotted spoon, transfer peaches to an ice bath for about 1 minute.

The skin should peel of nice an easily. After making my roasted red peppers the day before I was starting to feel like a peeling pro....

Voila! Skinned peaches!!

To slice a peach - cut vertically into the center so you knife runs along the pit. Make a second slice parallel to the first and you peach slices should come right out!

I have a thing for taking pictures of things that could be really aggravating jigsaw puzzles.

You are now ready to assemble your pie!

Ingredients:

8-10 fresh peaches, sliced

1/3 cup whole wheat pastry flour (all purpose would be fine - I only keep WW at home)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup splenda (or white sugar)

1/4 butter or earth balance

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp arrowroot powder

1 pkg unroll and go pastry crust*

1 oz coconut milk (any milk is fine)

*You can so make your own pastry crust, but this crust is just to darn easy and good for me to turn down. Not particularly healthy though.....

1. Mix flour, sugar, butter, arrowroot and cinnamon into a crumb mixture.

2. Place a pie crust on the bottom of a 9 inch pie pan.

3. Line shell with sliced peaches, sprinkle on crumb mixture and then more peaches. continue to layer until all is used up or you pie pan is overflowing.

3. Top with lattice strips of pie crust*. Brush on a little milk and sprinkle crust with brown sugar and cinnamon. You may want to cover you edges with foil for the first portion of cooking to avoid burning.

4. Bake at 450 for 15 minutes and then 350 for 30 minutes (you can remove foil edge covers at this temp). At the end of this time, turn off the oven but leave the pie in for about an hour.

*If you are not sure how to create the lattice strips do not fear - embrace the power of technology and check out this video!

My ready for alien invasion pie! Nah, just a little crust burn prevention!

So excited to serve you some pie!! If this photo looks like I left the pie in a cooling oven while I went on a run, then came home and took a shower and then quickly tousled my wet hair to take picture of myself and the pie with the camera timer, while Thor was sat on the couch watching baseball and laughing at me - well that's exactly what happened!