It’s wonderful living in the Driftless Region where the seasons change. Summer brings farmers markets and plentiful gardens. There are so many summer tastes to enjoy!
Who doesn’t love a fresh ripened peach? You bite into it and the juicy peach drips all over, but it’s a little taste of heaven to savor as summer winds down. Restaurants offer peach milkshakes, peach muffins, peach pie, peach iced tea and peach muffins. Like any seasonal fruit, peaches can be versatile.
Growing up in Owatonna, my mom made a delicious peach cobbler. She drained half of the liquid from the canned peaches with heavy syrup, but she kept some of the syrup to make into a warm topping. Along with corn on the cob, it was a highly anticipated part of my childhood summers. Since the peaches were canned, it could really be made any time of the year. Fresh peaches in season are also a winning combination.
Of course, there were other summer treats like root beer floats. And I can’t forget Steele County Fair foods like mini donuts or Cindy Nachos (voted best nachos in Minnesota by a WCCO contest in 2015). My mom worked at The Friendly Lunch, now Grace’s, when I was young, and their Cindy Nachos are pretty darn tasty. Cindy is one of the owner’s daughters; hence, the name, and she also happens to run the Mexican restaurant now where you can get the tasty nachos if you can’t make it the county fair.
Then there was Grandma’s garden of delights. Strawberry cream bread, eating fresh heirloom tomatoes and cucumbers in the garden with salt with my brother (and not getting caught), and all of those blue-ribbon winners at county fairs hoping to advance to the Minnesota State Fair. Those recipes were some of the best uses of cooking time and talent as well as giving bragging rights to the winners.
While in college, I worked at the State Fair twice since I lived on the nearby St. Paul “Ag” Campus of the University of Minnesota. One year, I worked selling bottles of Miracle Eye Glass Cleaner. The next year, I worked in a very hot, popular egg roll booth. The egg rolls were amazing, and that family made enough money during the State Fair to not work the rest of the year. At the State Fair, I also fell in love with cream puffs.
But where can one go after winning blue ribbons at fairs to showcase their culinary prowess? Well, a person could enter the Pillsbury Bake-Off® and win a lot of dough. The contest has been around for over 50 years and now gives out $50,000 for the top spot, along with the title of the year’s Most Valuable Baker (MVB).
During my college years, one of my roommates was working at Pillsbury and she gifted me a copy of the official “Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off® Cookbook.” In it was a recipe for Peach Elizabeth, which was more of a peachy crumble than my mom’s peach cobbler, and it was made with crushed cornflakes. All the cookbook’s recipes were Bake-Off competition winners, and Peach Elizabeth was superb.
A write-up about the recipe said that Peach Elizabeth did not win the Grand Prize or the famous top cash prize, but it was a category winner in the 1974 Pillsbury Bake-Off by a woman from Michigan. Winners at that time for a category division walked away with a $2,000 cash prize and a new GE range and microwave. Even though it didn’t win the overall prize, it did end up in the cookbook.
Whatever your cooking ability is, you can make this Easy Peach Crumble. I have tried using fresh peaches, but I prefer the taste and juiciness of canned peaches. Maybe because it’s what I grew up with.
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