Rosie Romances The Stone.

  Rosie is romancing the stone - the stone fruits of summer, that is.

 I love the dribblicious drupes of summer. We’re talking stone fruits — fruits with a thin skin, or exocarp, and a fleshy interior, or mesocarp, which surrounds the stone, or endocarp, which contains the seed. Cherries, nectarines, apricots, plums, pluots, and peaches, among others, are members of this botanical group.

To me, nothing says summer more than a cobbler, a crumble, a buckle, a pandowdy, a slump, a grunt, or a sonker. I don’t think there is any universal consensus as to the exact differences between all these creations. I would imagine that regional versions of each might vary throughout the same county.

Just know they’re all soupy messes of fruit and juices that melt into a rich, buttery crust, whether made with biscuits, batter, or pie dough. These creations will beg for a scoop of ice cream, then they will shout from the rooftops, “It’s SUMMER!”

Drupe Cobbler
with Peach Ice Cream

Filling:

 3 lbs. stone fruits, cut into 8 wedges

I used a combination of plums, apricots, and pluots.

1/2 cup sugar

2 TB flour

pinch kosher salt

Whisk together sugar, flour, and salt.

In a large bowl, toss mixture with fruits until well-mixed.

Set aside.

Topping:

1/2 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

two pinches kosher salt

1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature

2 ounces almond paste

1/2 cup sugar

3 eggs, room temperature

2 handfuls of sliced almonds

Heat oven to 350°.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl.

With a mixer, beat butter, almond paste, and sugar

about 3 minutes or until light and fluffy.

Add eggs one at a time,

beating after each addition.

Mix in dry ingredients.

Transfer fruit mixture to a 9 x 13 baking pan.

Plop batter over top of fruit

and sprinkle with almonds.

Bake about 50 minutes,

tenting with foil after 20 minutes.

Topping should be golden brown and fruit juices bubbling.

Let sit for 20 minutes.

Serve with homemade peach ice cream.

Rosie’s Peach Ice Cream
6 peaches, peeled and chopped (about 2 cups)
½ cup sugar
juice of ½ lemon
2 eggs
¾ cup sugar
1 vanilla bean, with seeds scraped out
2 ½ cups heavy cream
½ cup skim milk
Combine peaches,  ½ cup sugar, and lemon juice in a sieve set in a bowl to collect the

juices. Stir and press fruit occasionally, for about 2 hours, to extract the juice.

In a stand mixer, beat the eggs until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
Gradually beat in ¾ cup sugar, a little bit at a time. Beat on high for about 2 minutes.
Pour in cream, milk, vanilla seeds, and extracted peach juice and mix all together.
Transfer mixture to ice cream maker and process according to manufacturer’s directions.
When the cream stiffens, add in the peaches. Continue processing until the ice cream is ready.
I ended up with 2 quarts and 1 pint of peach ice cream.

Be reckless.
Throw in a maraschino cherry.

Mr. Hawthorne Just Asked Rosie.

Anyone wanna take a gander as to what this is?

No?

OK. It's a cobbler with homemade vanilla ice cream and a reduced berry sauce.

Last Friday, Mr. Hawthorne Just Asked Rosie: "Would you make a blackberry cobbler?"

Rosie: "Sure. Tomorrow. For the Fourth of July. But I'll have to make ice cream first, since that's the only way to eat a cobbler - with homemade ice cream." So I started on my custard-based vanilla ice cream.

My ingredients: 2 cups heavy cream

1 1/2 cups milk 4 large egg yolks pinch of salt 1/2 cup sugar 2 TB vanilla 1/2 cup milk

First, I beat the egg yolks with the sugar ...

... until it got to this nice pale yellow color.

I added in about 2 tablespoons of vanilla and set aside.

Next, I put 2 cups heavy cream, 1 1/2 cups milk, and salt in a heavy saucepan, and cooked over medium heat, stirring often, until the mixture began to simmer. Do not let it boil. But simmer for at least 5 minutes.

I love vanilla, so I added the seeds from 1/2 vanilla bean. Set aside for a few minutes to cool a bit.

Then I slowly poured the warmed mixture into the egg mixture, whisking constantly. You do not want scrambled eggs.

I poured the mixture back into the sauce pan and cooked over medium-low heat for 5-10 minutes until the mixture thickened. When it coats the back of a spoon, it's ready. Remove from heat and pour in the remaining 1/2 cup milk to cool off and stop the cooking.

I transferred the mixture to another bowl and immersed it in an ice water bath, stirring until the mixture was cooled through. Then I put the mixture in the fridge to chill completely before freezing in my ice cream mixer. Chill at least 4 hours, but better yet, overnight. Now, here is where my little plan went awry. (And remember, this was going to be my Fourth of July dessert.) After about 5 hours of chilling, I went down to get my Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker insert out of the freezer. And it wasn't there. I distinctly remember putting it in the freezer months ago and I don't remember taking it out. I looked everywhere for the insert. No can find. Anywhere. I went on line to see about ordering one and the insert alone was $45. (The whole machine was $76.) Oh well, it's not thrown out. It will eventually show up. So I took a trip down to the Kitchen Collection store, and bought a 1 1/2 quart Hamilton Beach ice cream maker for $29 on sale. I told the saleslady I had lost my Cuisinart insert and was only buying this so the Cuisinart would show up. You know how that works. And she understood completely. I got home, washed out my new insert, and took it downstairs to my freezer. Then I noticed a stool in my utility room and decided to stand on that, rather precariously, and look on top of the freezer, which sits on cinder blocks, since it's on the ground level and has been known to flood. And yes, of course, there was my Cuisinart insert. And I'm keeping both.

Back to the ice cream:

My mixture had been sitting in the fridge for 2 days, so it was well chilled. Mr. Hawthorne poured the quart mixture into the ice cream maker and turned it on and let it churn away.

And here's my homemade vanilla vanilla ice cream. (Double vanilla - pure extract and beans.) And there's NOTHING like homemade ice cream. Nothing.

Now, on to Mr. Hawthorne's request: Blackberry Cobbler.

Here's my original, hand-printed recipe:

(Click to enlarge.)

First the dry ingredients: 1 cup flour 1 cup sugar 1 teaspoon baking powder 2 teaspoons cinnamon

Sift dry ingredients together.

And here's everything else: sifted dry ingredients 1 cup milk vanilla 2 cups blackberries 1 drained 15 oz. can pineapple chunks 1 cup sugar 1 stick butter in 8 x 8 baking pan

The blackberries, pineapple, and cup of sugar.

I drained the pineapple, reserving the liquid. Mix fruit, add 1 cup sugar, and toss to combine. Let sit at least 30 minutes.

I stirred several times during the 30 minutes.

Look at all the pretty colors.

After the fruit and sugar have imbibed each other, strain, and reserve the liquid.

Sifted dry ingredients.

1 cup milk vanilla

Add the vanilla and milk to the dry ingredients.

Amount of vanilla is up to you. I used 1 tablespoon.

Pour the batter into the melted stick of butter.

Stir.

Ladle the sugared, strained fruit onto the batter.

And my cobbler is ready to go into a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, increase heat to 400 degrees and bake for 10-15 more minutes, until golden around edges. Next, my juice reduction.

Remember I'd saved the drained juice from the pineapple tidbits along with the strained liquid from the blackberry/pineapple/sugar menage a trois. I combined the two fruity liquids.

In a small, tall sauce pan, I heated the fruit jooses, over very low heat, and reduced it, for the entire time the cobbler baked. And to the math-impaired, that time would be 40-45 minutes.

Cobbler is ready for some ice cream.

Fruit cobbler with homemade vanilla vanilla ice cream with a pineapple/blackberry syrup reduction drizzled over top.

Oh my. This kicked ass. 'nuf said.