Peach Melba, for those who don’t know, is a dessert consisting of vanilla ice cream topped with (poached) peaches and raspberry sauce. If you haven’t had it, I highly recommend trying it if and when you can—it’s an incredibly delicious flavor combination. The first time I had it was a few years ago when my sister-in-law made it in popsicle form. From that moment onward, it’s been on my list of all-time most delicious desserts.
Technically, what I made this week was not truly Peach Melba as I did not include poached peaches as a mix-in. Instead, I used Alton Brown’s Serious Vanilla recipe and blended two very ripe white peaches into the base, making it more of peach-vanilla ice cream with a raspberry sauce swirled in. But hey, close enough!
Anyway, first up was making the raspberry sauce. I went with frozen raspberries.
The process was very simple: combine the ingredients, mix them together, heat it until smooth, and then strain.
The 1.5 tsp of cornstarch really helped thicken the sauce. It makes me think I could just use jelly or jam, but it’s nice to make it yourself I suppose.
The next step was the make the ice cream. Here’s the ingredient lineup.
Since I already documented the process of making Alton’s Brown’s vanilla, I’ll keep this brief. The first step is to combine the main ingredients and heat the mixture to 170°F.
From there, I added two peeled and chopped white peaches and immersion blended the whole thing. I also added about 1/8 of a teaspoon of guar gum just before chilling the mixture.
I let it sit in the fridge for about 6 hours before churning.
With the base churned, it was time to assemble. To incorporate the raspberry sauce, I layered half of the ice cream, then half of the raspberry sauce, then repeated by first two steps. I finished by swirling the layers together using a knife. I was so focused on doing this quickly (i.e. before the ice cream melted), that I didn’t capture any photos.
After tasting a bit of the dregs left in the mixing canister, I had a feeling this was going to come out good. I was not wrong, but we’ll get to that momentarily.
We shared the batch with some friends at a BBQ/cookout last night, which explains why those photos above are al fresco. As you can see, the raspberry sauce mixed-in nicely (though not as well towards the bottom of the container). But the final results were quite popular, as documented below.
The consensus was that this was very, very good. It may be, IMHO, one of the best ice creams I’ve made all year. The peach and vanilla flavor was excellent, and the slight bit of tartness from the raspberry sauce made it absolutely delicious. In previous recipes, I struggled to make the mix-in sauce thick enough and not icy. That wasn’t a problem this time due to the cornstarch. I think thickening fruit sauce mix-ins with cornstarch is a must moving forward.
Overall, this had great taste, great consistency, and great complexity of flavor. It checked all the boxes! Thank you Auguste Escoffier1, for creating the delicious dessert combination that is Peach Melba!
That’s all for now. Hope everyone has a great 4th of July weekend!
Yummmmmmmm