Recipes / Dessert
Grilled peaches with honey and mascarpone
Peach halves grilled over medium coals until soft and marked, served warm with sweetened mascarpone, honey and toasted almonds.
- Prep
- 10 min
- On the fire
- 10 min
- Serves
- 4
Ingredients
Mascarpone
Method
Cooking on gas?
- Preheat with the burners on high and the lid closed for 10 minutes, then turn them down to medium so the lid thermometer settles at 175 to 200°C (350 to 400°F). Brush the grates clean and oil them.
- Cook with the lid open and use the recipe times as a guide.
- Clean the grid well and wipe it with an oiled cloth, so the fruit does not stick.
- Cut each peach in half along the seam, twist the halves apart and remove the stone. Use a teaspoon to lift out a stone that clings.
- Brush the cut sides with the melted butter.
- Stir the mascarpone, icing sugar and vanilla together until smooth. Keep it in the fridge until you serve.
- Lay the peaches cut side down on the grid over medium coals. Cook for 4 to 5 minutes without moving them, until they have dark grill marks.
- Turn the peaches skin side down and drizzle a little honey into each hollow. Cook for another 3 to 5 minutes until soft.
- If the skins start to blacken before the flesh is soft, move the peaches to a cooler part of the grid.
- Serve two halves per person, warm, with a spoonful of mascarpone, the rest of the honey and the toasted almonds on top.
Done when: the cut sides have dark grill marks, the flesh gives when pressed with tongs, and juice pools in the hollow where the stone was.
Tips
- Very ripe peaches fall apart on the grid. Choose fruit that is just ripe and still firm to the touch.
- Tinned peach halves work out of season. Drain and pat them dry, then grill only the cut side for 3 minutes.
- Vanilla ice cream or thick cream can replace the mascarpone.
Peaches grow well in the Western Cape and the Free State, and in summer they are cheap and plentiful in South African shops and farm stalls. Grilling them over the last of the coals brings out their sugar and softens the flesh in minutes. Honey and mascarpone make it a quick dessert that needs no oven. For another fruit dessert from the fire, try braaied pineapple with cinnamon sugar.