Such a yum dessert and always popular with visitors who without fail want to know how to make it. You’d think such deliciousness was tricky, but this dessert is super quick to cobble together. Make it in the morning and leave the fruits to macerate in those yummy slightly boozy juices all day.
The recipe is from “The Complete Kiwi Pizza Oven, by Alan Brown.” An awesome book that taught me heaps and took my wood fire cooking next level.
10 – 12 ripe plums, peaches, apricots – stone removed and cut in half
1 cinnamon stick
1 star anise
1 bay leaf
60ml of brandy or your favourite liqueur
100ml verjuice, red, white, rose or green ginger wine
2 Tblspn of sugar or honey
Marinate
Choose a dish that will snuggly fit the fruits in a cosy, overlapping way. Butter the dish generously.
Lay the fruits in the dish, cut side up.
Break the herbs and spices a little and tuck them under the fruits.
Sprinkle over the sugar or drizzle over the honey and pour the brandy/ liqueur and wine around.
Cover the dish with a beeswax wrap and leave to marinate all day long
Cook
Warm the oven to 200°C.
Roast the fruit until they are starting to soften and caramelise around the edges and the juices have cooked down and thickened a bit. This takes about 20 minutes – it all depends on how juicy the fruit is.
We like to eat this with coconut yoghurt or vanilla icecream and a chunk of shortbread or a delicious gooey brownie. Leftovers can be whizzed into a puree and rippled through thick yoghurt for a simple pudding or frozen in iceblock moulds.
This is the best recipe! Wish I had frozen more of the Luisa plums so we could enjoy this all winter.
Glad you enjoyed it Jude! Theres always next year… 🙂