Sable of grilled peaches and mascarpone
This is a very simple yet beautiful dessert. Peaches can be difficult to find perfectly ripe particularly given the supermarket insistence on storage and transportation over flavour. Hunt around if you can at your local reparable grocer or market to guarantee ripe and sweet fruit. Ask for a slip stone variety so the stone or pip comes away easily prior to cooking. Start this recipe the day before as the peaches need to cool and the sable pastry needs to rest in the fridge overnight.
For the peaches:
The day before.
Preparation Time: 15 minutes
Cooking Time: 15 to 20 minutes
(serves 4)
Line a baking tray with silicone paper, and pre-heat the grill. I used the fan grill in the oven set at 240 degrees celsius. If you don’t have a fan grill the fan forced oven will do fine set at 200 degrees celsius.
Cut 4 ripe yellow peaches in half though the middle rather than length ways, removing stone but leaving skin intact.
Sprinkle each cut surface liberally with brown sugar, and a little vanilla powder
Cook in oven or under the grill until the fruit is just soft and the sugar melted. Around 10 to 12 minutes.
Allow to cool at room temperature prior to covering with Clingfilm and refrigerate overnight.
For the Sable: The day before.
Preparation Time: 20 minutes
Cooking Time: 15 to 20 minutes
(serves 4)
250 g plain flour
200g unsalted butter
75g icing sugar
3 egg yolks
½ tsp vanilla extract
Mix the icing sugar and the plain flour together.
In an electric mixer or by hand rub in the butter. The resulting mixture should be quite heavy and doughy.
Add in the egg yolk and quickly mix to form a dough.
Shape into a disc, wrap and rest for an hour in the fridge and 30 minutes on the bench.
To roll out:
Using a rolling pin roll the sable paste evenly out between two pieces of silicone paper to around 4 to 5mm.
Place on a flat tray and place in the fridge for a least an hour. This allows the butter to set and the pastry to firm up. When cold use a 10cm ring cutter to cut out discs. These discs need to be handled very carefully as they break and tear easily. Cool the discs overnight in the fridge.
Two hours before serving. Cook in a fan forced preheated oven at 155 degrees celsius until firm and only just slightly coloured.
Cool on a wire rack.
For the mascarpone.
Whisk together 100g of caster sugar with two egg yolks and 1 tsp od vanilla. When pale thick and creamy carefully fold in 500g of firm mascarpone. Don’t over work. Place in a piping bag with a large star nozzle.
To assemble
Dust the sable biscuit with icing sugar.
Place a small dot of the mascarpone on a large plate, carefully place the biscuit on top.
Pipe a swirl of mascarpone on top, finishing with the peach.
Drizzle with cooking syrup and garnish with fresh raspberries and another sugared sable biscuit.
