Butterscotch Sauce- Tasty! White Peach Cobbler- Meh.

This is a story about a delicious butterscotch sauce– but in order to fully appreciate it, you need some background on the culinary exploits leading up to it…

Our story began when I came into work this week to find a large bag of peaches on the counter, up for grabs. Unfortunately these were not exactly prime peaches– they were a bit mushy, some were bruised, and they were clearly on the verge of being good only for jam (not that jam is a bad thing). I informed the office that if there were any left at the end of the day I would take them home and make something delicious out of them, and apparently people took my words to heart, because I ended up with almost the entire bag!

I decided to make a cobbler, figuring that it would easily feed a crowd, but was somewhat stymied to realize upon cutting into the peaches that they were white peaches, rather than yellow as I’d assumed. White peaches are much milder and sweeter than their yellow cousins, and I’d never actually baked with them before, usually preferring to eat them straight out of hand. Since this was definitely not an option with these particular peaches, I decided that I’d add lemon juice and go light on the sugar, and hope for the best.

Peach Marzipan Danish

These pastries* were really a spur-of-the-moment creation, based on the availability of fresh peaches and a last-minute dinner invitation. You know me, I can never arrive at a gathering without some kind of baked good, so I skimmed my recipe box for inspiration and came up with these incredibly simple, yet incredibly tasty desserts. Squares of buttery puff pastry are topped with a pillow of marzipan and a handful of peach slices, then baked to crispy, flaky perfection. The tanginess of the peaches is set off nicely by the floral sweetness of the marzipan, and the crunch of puff pastry wraps it all together in a convenient bundle, ready for dessert or an indulgent breakfast treat.

*Okay, so these aren’t really danishes– a danish is a very specific type of pastry with a very specific type of laminated, yeasted dough. Puff pastry was a shortcut.