salted caramel peach crisp (2024)

Recipe

August 5, 2024August 15, 2024 by debJump to recipe, comments

Consider this the summer flip of one of my favorite recipes in my third cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Keepers — the apple butterscotch crisp.

Its story begins, as so many of my headnotes do, with a grievance, which is that fruit crisp recipes often don’t work as well as they should, because the nutty oat and brown sugar toppings often overcook or burn before the fruit underneath them has a chance to cook to bubbly pie-like perfection. Many recipes will tell you to simply cover the dish with foil if the crisp is getting too dark too soon, because who wouldn’t want to press a sheet of highly conductive metal over a hot pan in a 400-degree oven? So appealing! My preferred solution is to give the fruit a little lead time by cooking it first, and I often do this on the stove. But as I was sautéing my fruit with some butter and sugar, I realized I was almost making a caramel sauce. So why not actually make one? Once I did that, I was ruined for other crisps — forever.

In this summer version, we’re making a simple salted butter caramel sauce on the stove, and using it two ways: to parcook the peaches, deeply infusing them with that fragrant caramel, and at the end, as a final decadent drizzle over the top. If you’re picturing treacly sweetness, you’re in for a a wonderful surprise as real caramel has a depth of flavor and fragrance that a crisp sweetened with straight sugar could never.

A few more notes:

On salted butter: Most baking recipes call for unsalted butter not because salted butter isn’t honestly superior in every way — that is, with a more pronounced flavor and a longer shelf life, as salt acts as a preservative — but because the amount of salt in each box of salted butter is wildly inconsistent, so starting with a blank (unsalted) slate and adding a precise amount of salt gives you tighter control over the final saltiness. It makes sense, right? But it matters little here, as salted butter caramel is forgiving, and even the saltiest salted butter will still come up slightly shy of the saltiness we likely want in the final caramel.

On butterscotch vs. caramel: Butterscotch starts with brown sugar and sometimes vanilla; caramel starts with white/granulated sugar. More here!

Caramel without a thermometer: Yes, you can use a candy thermometer to make caramel sauce, but I never do. I feel that checking temperatures wastes precious time when your eyes can tell you what you need to know just from seeing the color, even in a dark pan. Promise.

On peeling peaches: I don’t peel peaches for pies and crisps. The skins are so soft when baked, they’ve never bothered me. However, if the skins bother you, there are two ways to skin a peach. 1. Cut a small x in the bottom of each peach and lower it into boiling water for 30 seconds. Remove with a slotted spoon, plunge it in cold water for a minute, and the skins should easily slide off. 2. You can use a thin-skin peeler like this. I keep one around for when I’m peeling one or two peaches or tomatoes. For four pounds, however, it might be easier to use the first method.

A slightly deceiving color: One of my favorite parts about leaving the peels on peaches is that as they bake, the skins turn the sauce a marbled magenta color. [See here!] But when added to a lovely copper caramel sauce, the resulting juices bubbling through the crisp topping look like a cauldron of caramel that might set your teeth on edge with sweetness. But, it’s deceiving as the crisp isn’t crazy sweet at all. Just enjoy the pretty color and trust that I don’t like excessively sweet desserts, either.

The Smitten Kitchen Classroom Wishlist Project 2024 is going strong! In the US, a tremendous number of teachers don’t get the funding they need to set their classrooms up for success. Most will end up paying out of their own pockets to buy educational materials, which is all wrong. I’ve asked teachers to send me their wishlists in hopes that we can help clear as many as possible, as we did the last two summers. Help out if you feel you’re able — you will unquestionably make a teacher’s (and their students) day! [Project information. Direct link to spreadsheet.]

Staub x Smitten Kitchen Braiser This pan, this braiser, the object of my decade-long cookware obsession, is finally back in stock! This spring, I announced that I was partnering with Staub to get them to bring back one of my favorite pans, this squat 4-quart Dutch oven I first bought in 2014 and have since cooked so many things in, it barely leaves my stove. Unfortunately, it sold out quickly twice but it’s back in stock again and I hope this means if you missed it in the spring, you get a chance to snag one now. You can watch a forge/factory tour I took last fall in France here. And you can order your own braiser here.

Video

Salted Caramel Peach Crisp

Servings: 8 or more
Time: 75 minutes
Source: Smitten Kitchen
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Filling and caramel sauce

4 pounds (1.8 kg) fresh firm-ripe, juicy peaches
Juice of half of a lemon
1/4 cup cornstarch or 3 tablespoons tapioca flour/starch
1 cup (200 grams) granulated sugar
1/4 cup (60 ml) water
6 tablespoons (85 grams or 3 ounces) salted butter
2/3 cup (155 ml) heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon flaky salt, plus more to taste

Crisp topping

12 tablespoons (170 grams or 6 ounces) salted butter, melted
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
6 tablespoons (80 grams) packed dark brown sugar
6 tablespoons (75 grams) granulated sugar
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 1/4 cups (125 grams) old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup (110 grams or 4 ounces) chopped pecans
1 1/3 cups (170 grams) all-purpose flour
Vanilla ice cream, to serve (not optional, sorry)

Heat your oven: to 400°F (205°C).

Prepare the peaches: Halve and pit the peaches, then cut the halves into 1/2-to-3/4-inch-thick wedges. Toss them in a large bowl with the lemon juice, and set aside while you make the salted caramel.

Make the caramel: In a 4-quart ovenproof deep skillet (I’m using my braiser)* stir together the sugar and water. Turn the heat to medium-high and cook, without stirring, until the surface is evenly bubbling all over and you begin to see golden and medium-brown spots in the bubbling sugar, about 5 minutes. Carefully (it’s going to sizzle dramatically) whisk in the butter and continue to cook until the sauce takes on an even medium-brown or copper color, about 2 to 4 minutes. Add the cream a splash at a time, whisking constantly, until it’s evenly mixed, and cook for another 3 to 4 minutes. Add flaky salt and stir to combine.

Remove from the heat just long enough to carefully ladle 2/3 cup of the sauce carefully into a spouted dish or bowl for later, and set that portion aside.

Parcook the peaches: Return the pan to the stove over medium heat, and add the peaches to the remaining caramel in the pan. The coolness of the peaches will cause the caramel sauce to seize up a little, but do not fret. Just let the peaches and caramel warm up and the sauce will loosen. Cook peaches and caramel together, stirring frequently, until the peaches have softened slightly, about 5 minutes. Stir in the cornstarch or tapioca flour until it disappears.

Make the crisp topping: Mix all of the topping ingredients in a large bowl until the butter is evenly dispersed and the mixture is rubbly. Sprinkle the topping over the peaches, then transfer pan to the oven and bake until the peaches are tender, their juices visibly bubbling around the crisp topping, and the topping is a light, nutty brown, about 20 minutes. Let it cool for 10 minutes, if you can bear it, before serving.

To serve: Scoop the crisp into bowls and top with ice cream and a drizzle of the reserved caramel sauce. If your caramel sauce has cooled and firmed up, you can warm it up quickly in the microwave — check every 10 seconds, as it warms and bubbles up quickly — or in a small saucepan on the stove.

Do ahead: Leftover crisp should keep in the fridge for 5-6 days, but it would be unprecedented. Leftover caramel sauce will keep for two weeks.

* If you don’t have a pan that goes from stove to oven, simply use a large, deep skillet for the caramel and parcooking the peaches, and transfer the peaches and sauce to a 4-quart or 9×13-inch baking dish pan for the baking portion, sprinkling the topping on just before it goes in the oven.

Previously

6 months ago: Crispy Potatoes with Mushrooms
1 year ago: Buffalo Chicken Cobb Salad and Raspberry Streusel Muffins.
2 years ago: Buttered Noodles for Frances
3 years ago: Deviled Eggs
4 years ago: Pasta with Pesto Genovese
5 years ago: Frozen Watermelon Mojitos
6 years ago: Corn Fritters and Bourbon Peach Smash
7 years ago: Hummus Heaped with Tomatoes and Cucumbers
8 years ago: Corn, Bacon and Parmesan Pasta
9 years ago: Tomato and Fried Provolone Sandwich
10 years ago: Easiest Fridge Dill Pickles and Grilled Peach Splits
11 years ago: One-Pan Farro with Tomatoes and Hot Fudge Sundae Cake
12 years ago: Bacon Corn Hash
13 years ago: Whole Wheat Raspberry Ricotta Scones
14 years ago: Mango Slaw with Cashews and Mint, Thai-Style Chicken Legs, Peach Blueberry Cobbler, and Scalloped Tomatoes with Croutons
15 years ago: Light Brioche Burger Buns, Blueberry Boy Bait, and Lemony Zucchini Goat Cheese Pizza
16 years ago: Chocolate Sorbet
17 years ago: Double Chocolate Layer Cake

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