Grilled Peaches with Mascarpone

Filled with creamy mascarpone cheese, these quick and easy grilled peaches make a dessert that is light, juicy and tangy sweet. A drizzle of golden honey adds the perfect sticky sweet finishing touch.

It’s break time! Today I am taking a brief intermission from my blogging about Switzerland. It was a great trip and I hardly realized how many food stories I was collecting while I was there. But some of those stories have me thinking about peaches, and there are some things that, no matter where you find yourself, just take you back home again…

A Trip Back Home

This morning I left my home office, walked downstairs to put in a load of laundry, then stopped in the kitchen for a late morning snack. There I spied a peach that I brought home from the market yesterday.  I picked it up, tested its weight and ran my thumb over its fuzzy pink skin. It was a white peach with a few small bruises. I carefully trimmed them away over the kitchen sink, then took a bite.  As I gazed out on my backyard through the kitchen window, the soft fragrance and pleasant flavor transported me to my childhood in Kentucky…

I was on the enclosed breezeway of the house I grew up in standing beside the cedar stained picnic table. The lounge chairs behind the table were drenched in the soft hot sunlight of late summer streaming through the windows. My Dad and my aunts were standing near the doorway extolling the wonders of the peaches they had just brought home from Bray’s Orchard. There was a large fragrant crate of them there on the table and the scent slowly permeated the air around me. Their pink fuzzy skin was soft and beautiful. Noticing my interest, I was given one to taste. Biting into that deliciously fresh peach the delicate sweet flavor and the gentle tartness on my tongue filled me with joy as the sticky juice ran down my arm.

I have had a special place in my heart for white peaches ever since.

White or Yellow Peaches?

What is the difference between white peaches and yellow peaches? I think it is something like the difference between white and yellow grits. It is a matter of tender subtlety versus brash intensity. A white peach has a delicate flesh that bruises easily and shows its bruises even more so. The flavor is not quite as sweet or sour as a yellow peach. It is, perhaps, a bit more of a complex blend of the two.

White and yellow peaches are quite different and yet the same. Like I am now different than the little girl who ate that perfect white peach with rapture while sitting on the concrete porch steps of my childhood home… and yet I am the same. I still find a smile curling the corner of my lips as I bite into this luscious peach in my hand and notice the juice running down my wrist.

Grilled Peaches with Mascarpone

And that brings me to a recipe. A friend made this for us in his backyard earlier this summer. It isn’t even a recipe, actually, but more like a wonderful idea, perfectly executed. After attending a concert together, we went back to our friends’ house to get our car. They asked us to stay for dessert, nothing difficult or too fancy, just a sweet bite to end the evening. We sipped wine while my friend turned on the barbecue, quickly halved some peaches and put them on the grill.

A few minutes later he turned them and scooped some mascarpone cheese into the center of the grilled peaches. Then he sprinkled the surface with a little sugar. When they were cooked through, and a little soft, he removed them from the grill. He placed the peach halves on a plate and drizzled them with honey before passing them around. They were nothing short of amazing! Light, creamy and tangy sweet those mascarpone filled peaches were the perfect ending to a wonderful evening. The complexity of the honey added a perfect sticky sweet finishing touch. We ate them around the fire pit in the darkness savoring every bite.

Grilled Peaches with Mascarpone

Course: DessertCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Easy

Servings

6

servings

Prep time

5

minutes

Cooking time

10

minutes

Total time

15

minutes

Filled with creamy mascarpone cheese, these quick and easy grilled peaches make a dessert that is light, juicy and tangy sweet. A drizzle of golden honey adds the perfect sticky sweet finishing touch.

Ingredients

• 3 Peaches (ripe but not too soft)

• 2 Tablespoons melted butter

• 1/2 cup mascarpone cheese

• 2 Tablespoons white sugar, brown sugar or Splenda

• Honey, to drizzle

Directions

• Cut peaches in half and remove the pit. Scoop the center out a little bit if desired. (The peaches I had were so pretty inside that I skipped this step.) Brush the top edge with butter, if you like.
• Place cut side down either directly on the grill, or on a piece of aluminum foil placed on the grill, depending on your preference and the firmness of your peach. Brush the back of the peach halves with remaining butter.
• Grill 4 or 5 minutes or until the peaches begin to soften.
• Turn peach halves over. Scoop approximateley 1 Tablespoon of mascarpone (Italian cream cheese) into each peach center. Sprinkle lightly with sugar.
• Grill for another 4 – 5 minutes, or until the peach is as soft as you’d like.
• Remove peach halves to serving plates and drizzle with honey.
• Enjoy!

Notes

• Though white peaches are delicious, yellow peaches work equally well in this recipe and might even hold up better because of their heartier texture.
• This dessert is delicious as is! That said, when I made it at home I had some Blackberry Basil Sauce on hand and offered it as an option to spoon over the dessert. I had a few takers. They told me it made a nice addition.