Before my older brother was born and every year since, we have celebrated my dad’s birthday, right in the middle of the summer, with peach cream pie. Peach cream pie has been made and eaten in various countries, at the lake we visit each summer, at campgrounds, and by the dozen in the backyard when my dad celebrated his “over the hill” birthday. Peach pie has been made as cobbler, with canned peaches, with different recipes, and with no cream when there was none available.
By far the best, however, is the recipe I am sharing here, with fresh peaches or nectarines, and with fresh whipping cream. You will find the original recipe below, with modifications to make it gluten free.
Peach Cream Pie
1 cup white sugar
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup all purpose flour
1 egg
1 ½ tbsp. vanilla
8 large peaches (or nectarines, as I have used here,) pitted, skinned, and sliced. (We used a carrot peeler with much success.)
¼ tsp. cinnamon
1 pint whipping cream, divided
Beat the egg in a dish. Brush some onto the inside of the unbaked pie crust to prevent sogginess when baking. Set the remainder aside.
Place the peaches in the unbaked pie shell. (If you are making a gluten-free version, you may want to partially bake the crust first.)
Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the remainder of the egg, flour, vanilla. You can also add 1/4 cup of the cream for a richer filling, but it will be a moister pie. Mix completely. It will be a soft paste, not runny. Spread this mixture on the peaches. Sprinkle the peaches with the cinnamon.
Bake at 400F for 10 minutes, lower the oven to 350F and bake an additional 45 min.
Serve as-is OR (and this is how we do it), cool completely, refrigerate, and whip the remaining whipping cream. Spread the whipping cream over the top of the pie. Serve cold.
Original Butter Crust
2 C all purpose flour
1/4 t salt
2/3 C cold butter
5 T cold water
Combine flour and salt. Cut in butter until crumbly. Stir in water to moisten.
This makes 1 deep dish or 12″ pie crust or 2 shallow dish 9″ crusts.
You can make this by hand or use the pastry blade of your food processor.
Chill, if possible, then roll out on a floured surface. To get a flakier crust, roll it thin.
To make a gluten-free version of this pie, substitute an all purpose gluten-free flour blend for the 1/3 cup of all-purpose flour in the pie filling. For the crust, I recommend the pie crust from Gluten-Free Baking Classics, by Annalise Roberts.
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You can garnish the finished pie with thinly sliced peach or some edible flowers, such as nasturtiums. Serve with love and enjoy!
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Nicola Alesandrini lives in Northern California with her family, where she spends her days chasing kids, enjoying bits of nature, and avoiding laundry. She’s a jack-of-all-trades who loves economical and ecological living. She writes and crafts whenever she can squeeze it in and she blogs about it all at Which Name? .
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