Local and Seasonal: Peaches

I live a bike-ride away from Terhune Orchards, and this week their farm store has been fragrant with the smell of their own, tree-ripened peaches. Presented with all those peaches glowing in the afternoon sunlight, I was prompted to throw together a crumble. It was more than pretty good, so I wanted to share the peach-love.

I made it a bit ahead — the resulting cooling time makes the crumble topping crispier and allows the flavors time to blend. A couple of notes on the ingredients: when picking your peaches, look for fruit that yields ever so slightly to the touch; and don’t waste this recipe on those lovely but oh-so-delicate white peaches — use yellow-flesh fruit. Turbinado sugar is raw sugar (less processed than cane or brown sugar). If you cannot find it, I would suggest light brown sugar as a replacement. I used vanilla sugar (rather than vanilla extract), available from the Savory Spice Shop in downtown Princeton, but the extract should work just as well. Finally, I would love to say that this is just as good with white whole wheat flour, which is better for you than all-purpose white flour, but I tested it, and the truth is, in this case, you need to use the white stuff to showcase the marriage of almonds and peaches.  Happy peach party!

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