Its the Easter holidays and days can start at a much slower pace. Hubby gets up at 7am to walk the dog and whilst he is gone I always get up to make him a fresh coffee to enjoy when he gets back, its just a few minutes together before the day really starts. As I don’t have school runs at the moment, we take our coffee back to bed and after he leaves I enjoy a little while relaxing watching the Good Food Channel and spotting great recipes that I just have to bake like this beautiful peach crumble galette.

My Food Porn of the moment is Donna Hay, I am really enjoying her fresh and simple recipes and have a rapidly growing list of things to cook and bake.

The first recipe I decided to bake last night as Max (Rosie’s Boyfriend) always comes for dinner on a Wednesday and like me loves his desserts and unlike my brood, is a little more adventurous. Only Luca would be up for trying this dessert, the rest of them hate cooked fruit !!!!

Anyway, it is very simple to make, I did on this occasion buy the pastry, but now I know how nice it is, I may make my own next time, especially as I think it would work well with other fruit when we have a glut from the garden and no ready made pastry to hand.

I did have a slightly soggy bottom, but I am not sure how you could avoid this, as the peaches release so much juice and you can not blind bake first, but I think I will go for a thinner bottom next time. Also I think the topping would make a perfect crumble with the peaches on its own and will definitely be trying that as well.

The peaches were sweet and heavenly, a little taste of summer! They did how ever cost me a fortune to buy ripe ones, but this recipe will be perfect to bake when the peaches are in season and on offer at a £1 a carton.

Buon appetito

350 g shop bought or home-made sweet shortcrust pastry
3 tbsp apricot jam
3 peaches, sliced
vanilla ice cream
For the topping

40 g butter, softened
2 tbsp almonds, finely chopped
35 g flour
2 tbsp caster sugar
½ tsp ground cinnamon

Preheat oven to 200c/180 fan/gas 6. Roll out pastry between 2 sheets of non-stick baking paper into a rough round about 5mm thick.

Place the pastry on a baking tray lined with non-stick baking paper. Spread the pastry with the jam leaving a 5cm border. Top the jam with the peaches.

Fold over the pastry to form a rim. To make the crumble topping, combine the butter, almonds, flour, sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle in clumps over the top of the peaches. You will notice that the recipe doesn’t say to use an egg wash before baking, I think I will next time as it took ages for the pastry to colour & even after 30 minutes of cooking I still felt that it looked a bit pale!

Bake for 25 minutes or until pastry and the crumble top are golden. Serve warm with vanilla ice-cream.

Note: If you just wanted to make a crumble, I would use as many peaches as you feel your chosen dish needs, I probably wouldn’t add sugar if the peaches were really ripe as they are really naturally sweet when cooked and just double the crumble ingredients, top you peaches with it and pop it all into the oven for about 30 minutes at 180C, or until the crumble is golden & crisp and bubbling away nicely.