I made this recipe a month ago when the peaches were delicious and juicy, now you get the last peaches of the season…bye bye my sweet fruit.

This dessert reminds me of my childhood…during the summer months when I used to go in town with my mom, we would sit down sur la terrace d’un cafe in Place Stanislas, and watch people walk by indulging with one of those ice cream desserts. Life could not get any better and sweeter. Peche Melba was one of my favorite ice cream cups (coupes de glace), along with Chocolat Liegeois and Poire Belle Helene. It’s fairly simple, you only need excellent ingredients.

The dessert was created in 1893 by Auguste Escoffier for the Opera Singer Nellie Melba, that’s where it got its name. It’s simply a peach poached in a syrup served with vanilla ice cream, raspberry coulis and toasted almonds. It’s a great dessert to serve when you have 6-8 guests and that you don’t want to start getting into complicated desserts. Since it’s still peach season with peaches sweet and juicy, this would be the right dessert to enjoy right now. I bought tons of peaches, so it looks like this will be on the menu for the next week or so. No complaints.

Ingredients for 4

• 4 peaches, cut in half, pit removed
• 2 packs raspberries
• 3 tbs sugar (or more to taste)
• 1 tbs lemon juice
• Vanilla ice cream
• 3 tbs toasted sliced almonds
• whipped cream (optional)

• water (enough to cover the peaches)
• 1/4 lb sugar
• vanilla bean, cut in half and scraped
• 1 star anise

Another fruit based dessert, or snack or gourmandise, you name it. I might not have cooked much while in France, but I sure did buy a lot of kitchen gadgets, such as my silicon mini madeleines molds. And since I came back, I baked those madeleines many times. They’re really tiny, about 1.5 inch length, and they go so well as a little “accompagnement” to any fruit based dessert, or ice cream, or simply as is as a delicious little snack.

But this is not about madeleines (I will write a post on mini madeleines soon after this one) and only about a wonderful roasted pear slowly baked with honey, vanilla and orange juice. A very simple dessert, yet elegant and absolutely delicious. You don’t need to serve this pear with madeleines, or whipped cream, but I think for a more “finished” dessert, they do the trick. You need pears that are not too ripe but not to firm either. Pear that are too ripe will cook very fast and will get mushy while cooking and you won’t be able to serve them. So in that respect, it’s better to get them too hard than too soft, that way you can always cook them longer.

For the whipped cream, I used a Siphon, they’re quite handy if you want to make espuma, flavored or fancy whipped creams, such as mascarpone whipped cream, avocado whipped cream, etc… I developed a crêpe menu for a company that makes these siphons and who opened a crêpe joint in Berkeley, so they gave me one siphon. Honestly I would have never thought of buying one, but since I have one now, I use it quite often. Here I flavored the cream with rose water and its delightful and delicate scent blended very well with the fruity flavors of the pear. That was indeed a real treat. Will re-do this dessert with no doubt over and over again…and real soon.

Ingredients for 4

• 2 pears, pealed cored and sliced lengthwise
• Vanilla bean powder
• 2 tbs honey
• 5.07 fl oz (or 150 ml) orange juice
• 1 tbs butter, cut in small pieces
• 1 cup (or about 200 ml) heavy cream
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp rose water

Preparation

Place the peeled pears in a dish, spread honey on top. Add orange juice, vanilla bean powder and butter cut in small cubes on top of pears. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 375 F for about 20 minutes or until the pears are soft but not mushy. Turn pears around during the cooking process and keep pouring juice on top. If the juice decreases and starts to thicken too much, add extra orange juice. When pears are cooked, remove from oven, divide on plates, pour juice on top and serve with cookies, whipped cream, madeleines, etc…

For the whipped cream, place heavy cream in siphon, add powdered sugar and rose water. Shake well. Add cartridge. Place back in the refrigerator to cool.

Don’t we all love crêpes? They’ re so easy to make and always a great pleasure to share with friends or just when you have a crêpe craving. You can flavor the dough and enhance them with fruits, jams, sugar, etc… I was stopped at the traffic light this morning just in front of Ti’Couz which is a popular crêperie Bretonne where they serve traditional galettes bretonnes made with buckwheat flour. This restaurant is packed from Monday through Sunday and most of the time, there is a line out the door since they don’t take reservations. If you ever end up in San Francisco one of those days, you might want to check it out, besides it’s not an expensive place.

So here we go again, I stop in front of this restaurant for 3 minutes, and I started to have a craving for crêpes…those days anything gives me a craving, I don’t know if this is a condition, but there should be a name for it.

Usually crêpes are served with cider. We drink some lightly alcoholic dry cider that is different from what you get in the US and not as sweet. It’s the perfect drink combination with crêpes and you can just smell the wonderful scents of Normandy and Britanny.

In France, everyone knows how to make crêpes but everyone has its own trick on how to make a perfect and light batter. Some people add beer to make them “airy”. I never quite managed to make them jump out of the pan, up in the air, and back in the pan…lacking practice.

What is better than pears and chocolate? maybe banana and chocolate…well if you want you can substitute pears with banana, it should work as well.

I caramelized the pears and flamed them with rum…chocolate, pears and rum go wonderfully together. Then the final touch is the whipped cream flavored with almond extract that gives this crêpe dessert a little twist. You can serve it with vanilla ice cream as well.

Ingredients for about 5-6 crêpes

For the crêpes

• 2.47 oz (or 70 g) flour
• 0.52 oz (or 15 g) sugar
• 1 egg
• 5 fl oz (or 15 cl) milk
• 1 tbs unsweetened cocoa

For the pear filling

• 3 bartlett pears
• 1 tbs sugar
• 1 tbs butter
• vanilla powder
• 1.5 tbs dark rum

For the almond whipped cream

• 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
• 1 tsp powdered sugar
• 1/2 tsp almond extract

Instructions

For the crêpes

In a mixing container, mix flour with egg and sugar then gradually add milk. Mix well to obtain a smooth consistency. Add cocoa powder. Mix well to obtain a smooth batter. Let it rest for one hour.

In the meantime, prepare the whipped cream. Add sugar and almond extract to the cream and whip it. Place in the refrigerator while the crêpes get ready.

Make crepes using a non stick pan. Slightly butter the surface of the pan and pour evenly batter to make a thin crêpe. Turn on the other side.

For the filling

Peel the pears and slice them into thin slices (about 5 mm slices). Melt butter in a non-stick pan, add pear slices and brown them on all sides, then sprinkle with sugar. Let them caramelized. Pour rum and flame.

Fill half of each crêpe with pears, fold the other half on top. Then fold in quarters. Place some whipped cream on top and serve.