Quick & Dirty Peach Pie

The last few handfuls of this summer’s peaches are ready to be eaten this week- soft, sweet, juicy and jammy- perfect for baking or, well, jamming.

I’ll get to the jam tomorrow (and it’s a good’er, I promise), but today let’s dig into some pie. I love a good peach pie.

This recipe is quick- it takes just a minute or two to put together- and dirty, since I like to dirty mine up with a bit of booze in the batter (to no one’s surprise, I’m sure, if this isn’t your first visit to Port and Fin). You can certainly omit the booze- I imagine most, if not all, of the alcohol cooks out anyway- but the residual flavour from a brandy or amaretto layers the flavours and adds a nice complexity to an otherwise very simple dish.

I am always impressed with a handmade crust, lovingly hand worked and chilled and all chemistry’d up with grandma or great-grandma’s secret methods. You know, from recipes that use measurements like “a lump of butter the size of a walnut” or “a piece of ginger the size of your thumb.”

This is not that recipe.

Quick and dirty, remember? I use a premade freezer crust here because I’m lazy and the prospect of making a fussy crust at the end of a long work day is… well, it’s not going to happen, is it?

To make it even quicker, you can use canned peaches- I often do. Today it was fresh peaches, however, since their hauntingly sweet smell from the pile on my counter told me “don’t put these in your bag for work, they will smush into goo. These are pie peaches.” (also known as ‘just firm enough to cut into with a fork, not smooshy enough to sacrifice to the jam pot’)

But I digress, on with the recipe! I like this pie served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. If you can enjoy it outside on one of our last warm evenings of summer, all the better!