Peach & Huckleberry Crisp

Peach & Huckleberry Crisp

I'm back with one of our favorite summer recipes. The original recipe was from my sister a zillion 35 years ago when I was first learning to cook. I was about to be married and my cooking skills amounted to being able to make sloppy joes and hot dogs. She taught me to make enchiladas, tuna casserole, and this dessert. But the dessert was for an apple crisp, and while I like apples well enough, over the years I found myself making it with peaches more often. Then I had some fresh blueberries and decided to make it with both peaches and blueberries. Yum! Now that we live in Montana, I decided to try huckleberries instead of blueberries. Huckleberries are a bit of an obsession for Ken, so finding recipes to use them has become a quest. 

Besides making it with huckleberries, I decided to make the recipe healthier and see if anyone noticed. Success! So that is the recipe I'll share here. If you want the original not-so-healthy version, just leave a comment and your email and I'll be happy to send it to you. 

5-6 whole peaches, peeled and sliced

1 cup huckleberries

3/4 cup Splenda

1 tsp cinnamon

1 cup flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup Splenda Brown Sugar Blend

1/3 cup Land of Lake butter spread with canola oil

Grease a 13" x 9" baking pan (or use cooking spray!) and preheat oven to 350. 

Combine peaches, cinnamon, and Splenda in a bowl. Gently add the huckleberries to the mixture. Spread in  the baking dish. 

Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and Splenda brown sugar blend. Add the oatmeal and mix. Sprinkle the dry mixture over the fruit. Melt the butter spread and dribble over the top. 

Bake for 40-50 minutes. 

The topping will be crisper if you serve it soon after removing it from the oven. Leftovers will have a softer topping as the fruit juice is absorbed into the cooled dessert. 

I like to serve it with whipped cream, but light whipped topping is good, too. Or ice cream. :-) 

Ken's Favorite Cake

Oatmeal Cake

Cake

1 1/2 cups boiling water

1 cup uncooked oatmeal

1 cup white sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup butter or margarine

2 eggs

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups flour

Grease and flour 13" x 9" baking pan. Preheat oven to 350.

Pour the boiling water over the oatmeal in a mixing bowl and let stand for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, mix in the other ingredients. Pour into the baking pan and bake for 30 minutes - or until a toothpick comes out clean. 

Topping

1 cup butter

1/2 cup cream

2 tsp vanilla

1 cup brown sugar

2 cups coconut

Melt butter, then add other ingredinets and stir. Spread topping on the cake (works best if you do it soon after removing the cake from the oven). Put under the broiler until the coconut is lightly toasted and brown. 

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Ken and my work husband Ron are always tag-teaming me, making me bake cakes. Okay, "making" is perhaps not the correct word. It's more like they both nag me constantly and I finally give in to save my sanity. Ken loves this cake and would probably have me make it once a week if I would. But it's an alarmingly unhealthy pan of wonderfulness, full of sugar and butter and eggs. Yummy, but only for occasional consumption.

I do have plans to experiment with the Oatmeal Cake to make it less unhealthy. I'm not sure how Splenda's Brown Sugar blend will work in the broiled topping, though. That's my favorite part, so I hate to mess it up. Anyone every try that? Anyway, I'll post about my experiments in the future -- success or miserable failure.

Oh -- Ken must have felt obligated to help out my work husband in the cake department after achieving success with the oatmeal cake. So he bugged me until I made a lemon cake to bring into work. It's nothing special -- just a box mix with some lemon pudding and cool whip. It was a bit of an experiment itself (with the pudding), so we'll see how it works out. Definitely an eat-with-a-fork (or spoon) cake -- no eating with your hands!