I’ve been cooking up a storm the last month or two, but have not gotten around to telling you about it. But today’s the day!! I made this for the wonderful Tante Inge and Onkel Günter last week and they loved it and asked for the recipe – always a good sign. They drove 4 hours to come and celebrate Karl’s 84th birthday (my father-in-law) – thanks for coming!

I found this recipe in the cookbook “Perfect Plates in 5 ingredients” by John Whaite and I have made several things out of it, all of them really good. His recipe calls for fresh thyme, but I (a) didn’t have any, and (b) didn’t feel like a savoury herb in my dessert. However, feel free to add 3 sprigs of fresh thyme to the nectarines before baking.

He calls the dough thingies “cobbles” which I hadn’t heard of before, so Mr Google was asked as per usual. Apparently common in Ireland, they are basically American biscuits, or dumplings, or cobbler mix. Whatever you choose to call them, they are deelicious. He, John Whaite, uses strawberry yoghurt and they were so quick and easy to prepare. Give it a try!

We were 6 people so I doubled the recipe and it was far too much. If you are having it solely then make more, but as a dessert this was enough for 6 people. I served it with ice cream, which might also explain why it was more than enough! John served his for breakfast, which I too will try sooooon!

INGREDIENTS
Serves 4
4 nectarines, apricots or other stone-fruit
5 teaspoons honey, preferably runny honey
100g self-raising flour (or 100g flour and ½ pkt baking powder 5g)
Pinch of salt
15g butter, at room temperature
130g strawberry or raspberry yoghurt
Ice-cream to serve, optional

METHOD
1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Line a baking tray with baking paper. This is not strictly necessary but does save on washing up!
2. Remove the stones from the fruit (cut in half, twist the halves against each other, remove stones – depending on the ripeness of the fruit this can be easy or not!) and slice each half into 4 slices.
3. Place on the baking tray and spoon over 2tsp of the honey. Mix.
4. Put the flour and salt into a bowl and rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips till you have very fine crumbs. Add the yoghurt and last 3tsp of honey and stir till just mixed – don’t overmix, just combine all.
5. Leave to rest for 15 minutes then scoop spoonful’s randomly around the nectarines. Bake for 25-35 minutes till golden brown in colour. Serve warm with ice-cream if using.

And that’s it! Enjoy!!