Thursday, June 26, 2008

Fresh Peach Pie

This is one of my top 3 favorite pie recipes from Anne Christensen (her daughters taught my first cooking class when I was 8), and it comes from the best cookbook I own.

When I was in Young Women's, we did a fundraising project for Girl's Camp and made a cookbook (which is what our dear leaders wanted us to think).

Um, we, the Young Women, didn't do much more than collect recipes from our moms. I can't imagine putting together this big of a cookbook today without the conveniences of email, cutting and pasting (all the recipes were written by hand and turned into the Young Women--the adults organized, indexed, typed AND typed!).

15+ years later, this cookbook is highly coveted because it is so full of the BEST recipes ("Really?" someone will say, "You have a black Arcadia Ward cookbook?"). It's everything a ward cookbook should be, full of my favorite childhood recipes by my favorite people growing up. I'd be so sad if I lost mine!

Coconut Almond Crust:
1 c blanched almonds
1 c canned moist-style coconut, flaked--I just use the bag of coconut in the baking section
1/4 c sugar
1/4 c butter

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grind almonds medium-fine. Mix with cocnut. Work in sugar and butter with fingers or spoon. Press evenly in bottom and sides of a 9-inch glass pie plate, reserving 3 T of crumbs for the top. Bake 10-12 minutes until golden brown. If edges get too brown, cover with foil. Place remaining crumbs in pan and toast in oven, same time as pie shell, about 5 minutes.

Filling:
1 c sour cream
dash salt
6 T powdered sugar
1 t orange juice
1 t orange zest
1 t vanilla
4-5 large peaches, peeled and sliced
1 c whipping cream

Beat sour cream. Add salt, 4 T powdered sugar, orange juice, zest, and vanilla. Spread on bottom and sides of shell. Cover with peaches, arranged in attractive manner in shell (or just dump them all in). Whip cream. Fold in remaining 2 T powdered sugar. Cover peaches with whipped cream. Sprinkle top with remaining mixture from pie shell. Chill.

4 comments:

Kate said...

A few years ago they reprinted the black cookbook.. for the final time. The cookbook company kept the records for a certain number of years, and they had one last chance to order some before the records were destroyed (or something). So my mom was kind enough to get a bunch of extras... and I gave them to my mother-in-law, grandmother-in-law, and I even have a spare. This and the red one are my favorite cookbooks of all time. I use so many of the recipes regularly. We were SO lucky to grow up with so many gourmet chefs in our ward.

EmilyCC said...

Oh man, I lost my red one a LONG time ago (I think that's why my mom kept the black one until I got married).

sara said...

I use my black one all the time - and the red one too! But the black one has most of the good red one's in it. But my red one is falling apart. I haven't tried that recipe but it sure looks tasty!

EmilyCC said...

Oh, Sara, that makes me feel better! I'll still have to borrow my mom's red one and check it out. Kate, you'll have to let me know about your favorites in the red cookbook :)