Grilled Peach with Cream, Shortbread Cookies, and Corn Ice Cream
When we decided on the theme for this next club meet-up, Lee and I were at a loss for what to do. "Grilled" desserts aren't broad-ranging in recipes when you do a search online. Nor is it easy to find much in most cookbooks. After searching, I did notice a few themes for grilling sweets: Fruits, S'mores, and using the grill as an oven to bake breads and cakes were the majority of concepts out there. After perusing a bulk of the recipes, I felt a little disappointed that the recipes I found were almost too simple--the idea mainly being that grilling brings out the natural flavors in fruits, and there's not much else to it.
So, feeling the lack of a challenge in the found recipes, I decided to test my palate by piecing together a few extra elements to one of the recipes to make a grander recipe. We wanted to do a fruit, and peaches sounded like a great flavor to start with. Then using the concept of "peaches and cream," I wanted to add an ice cream to add some creaminess, and I thought corn would go well with the cream flavor as well. So, we decided to try a corn ice cream. Also, at a previous dinner, my sister-in-law had made some great tasting shortbread cookies, and I thought that might add to the dish. I procured the recipe from her. It also turned out to have nuts in it as well, which I thought would work with the butter, corn, cream, and peaches.
Before grilling the peaches, we had to get the ice cream and the shortbread ready since the peaches would be served immediately off the grill.
Two days prior, we made a batch of the corn ice cream. Overall this was easy, having made a few rounds of ice cream batches in the past. One of the problem areas when making ice cream is during the mixing of the egg (yolks or whites) with the hot cream. If not done properly, the eggs can cook and clump up. Ice cream recipes will tell you to whisk the yolks/whites as you slowly pour in the hot cream mixture. This is easier said than done, as one hand is whisking and the other is holding a potentially large saucepan that's pretty hot. There's room for human error. A solution that worked for me was to put the eggs in a blender, and turn it on low speed. With both hands free, you can slowly pour in the cream mixture as the blender does the mixing for you. Another thing I added into the mix for this batch was some salt and vanilla extract. I might have added too much salt, and not enough sugar. After finishing, I tried it out and I'm not sure if it was sweet enough. It tasted like corn, but not so much like a dessert. However, when eaten with the sweetness of the honey and the peaches, they balanced out to work fairly well. I started another batch tonight, and adjusted the sugar level to make it more sweet. We'll see how that goes at the club meeting.
Prepping the corn for infusion with heavy cream and milk.
Adding sugar.
Adding heavy cream and milk.
Separating the egg yolks from the whites.
Adding sugar to the yolks.
Bringing the corn/cream mixture to a boil.
Blending the yolks with the hot corn/cream mixture in the Vitamix.
Thickening up the custard.
Straining out the skins.
The ice cream maker at work.
Corn Ice Cream!
Yesterday, we made the shortbread cookies. The recipe's pretty simple, basically just mixing all the ingredients together, which results in a crumbly dough. Then the heavy cream is added to get it to stick together. One thing I found is that you shouldn't add too much as you still need to roll the dough out, cut it, and be able to pick it up so you can place it on the baking pan. So if it's too wet, that's very hard to do. We tried cutting them into circles of various sizes, with a few thoughts of placing cookies under the peaches and/or into the side of the ice cream. In the end we tried both, and found that both was overkill both in presentation as well as texture/taste. For the offical BBQ, we'll probably do one or the other.
Starting the Shortbread Cookies with butter and sugar.
Mashing it all up.
Adding in finely chopped walnuts and flour.
Adding in heavy cream to get the dough to stick.
Cutting the dough into circles.
On the baking pan and into the oven.
Shortbread Cookies.
Tonight, we put all the pieces together. We got the grill going, then ate dinner. Lee halved the peaches, pitted them, oiled the cut sides, and placed them on the grill. Then after about 3 minutes, I flipped them over so the pit was upright, and we were able to put honey over the top, then a small mound of cream cheese with nuts into the recession of the pit. We also placed two different sizes of the shortbread cookies on the grill for a few minutes to warm them up. As the peaches were finishing, the larger of the shortbread cookies were placed on the plates. Then each plate got a scoop of the corn ice cream to accompany the cookie. The smaller cookies stood on the ice cream as the peaches came off the grill and landed on top of the large shortbread platform. We topped the cream cheese with a few blueberries, and the dish was complete!
Firing up the grill.
Grilling the peaches open face down.
Adding honey after the peaches are done on the pit side.
Adding cream cheese.
Final plating.
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