White Peach+Olallieberry Walnut Galettes with Maple Nut Ice Cream, and Happy Father's Day

^White peach and olallieberry walnut galettes: we'll get back to these.  But first, I wanted to talk about my dad.  From a young, young age, my dad instilled in me a love of the finer things in life.  Like eating ice cream.  From the carton.  My mom still *facepalm*s when she sees this photo.

My dad's favorite ice cream, as I learned from a very early age, is maple nut.  He acquired a taste for the stuff when doing his graduate work in Rhode Island long ago, but maple nut is not the most common flavor on the West Coast, so he'd always pine away to me about how wonderful the distance flavor of his favorite ice cream was.  We'd make pilgrimages every time we visited Rhode Island to ice cream shops just for a scoop of maple nut ice cream, and I knew it was always a special treat for not only me but also my dad when we visited Fenton's in Oakland because they were one of the only ice cream shops around making the special flavor.

(Me in my dad's slippers)

Thus, maple nut was one of the first flavors I ever made when I learned to make my own ice cream at home, just because it's so difficult to find the good stuff (and flying out to Rhode Island for a scoop of ice cream is just not economically feasible!).  After that, every year for Father's Day and my dad's birthday, he gets a maple nut ice cream-inspired dessert.  Because that's just what daughters do.  :-)

This year, the accompanying dessert for my dad's maple nut ice cream comes in the form of white peach and olallieberry walnut galettes, which are an amazing amalgamation of the fruits that define summertime: stone fruit and berries.  If I remember correctly, white peaches are my dad's favorite kind of stone fruit, and we'd gobble down so many of them, standing in the orchard with the sweet juice dripping down our faces and arms, whenever we'd go peach-picking every June when I was young.

Olallieberries, on the other hand, are the front-running contenders for my favorite berries.  After just one taste of olallieberry jam this past November while driving down the California coast, I fell in love.  They don't have the same tartness as raspberries, and they just sort of burst with sweet flavor in your mouth.  When I saw these at the market this past weekend, I literally jumped up and down in sheer joy.

Put white peaches and olallieberries all together, layer them with ground walnuts, and what you end up with is a perfectly rustic, summertime pastry that filled my kitchen with some of the most amazing aroma I've ever been witness to while they were baking in the oven.  I am not kidding you.  The crust is perfectly flaky with just the hint of sweetness from a sprinkling of turbinado sugar and apricot jam.  The filling is, as I said before, summertime encapsulated in a single bite, with the lightness of the white peach and the seedy juices of the olallieberries atop a thin layer of walnut paste, which absorbs all of the fruit liquid during baking.

Finally, top the still-warm galettes with scoop of sweet, syrupy maple nut ice cream, and the creaminess of the ice cream complements the fruitiness of the galettes excellently, slowly melting into all of the cracks in the pastry and between the berries and peaches until it reaches and melds with the layer of walnuts at the bottom.  mmm..... this one's for you, Daddy!  Happy Father's Day!

Read on for recipe...

White Peach and Olallieberry Walnut Galettes
inspired and adapted from Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Fruit
makes six individually-sized galettes, ~5 inches in diameter

for pastry:
2 cups AP flour
1 tspn sugar
1/4 tspn salt
12 Tbspn butter
4 Tbspn cold water

1. In a food processor or using a pastry cutter, mix the flour, sugar, and salt to combine.
2. Cut in the butter to the flour mixture until it is the size of peas.
3. Gradually add the cold water and pulse just until a dough begins to form.
4. Remove the dough from the food processor and form into a ball. Wrap with plastic wrap or parchment paper and chill for at least 30 minutes.

for filling and baking:
1/2 cup walnuts
2 Tbspn flour
2 Tbspn + 1 tspn sugar
1 lb. firm and ripe white peaches, thinly sliced (~4 medium white peaches)
2 heaping Tbspn light brown sugar
1 Tbspn + 1 tspn cornstarch
6 oz. olallieberries
heavy cream, for brushing on galettes
turbinado sugar
apricot jam

1. Place a baking stone in the lower third of the oven. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
2. In a food processor, grind together the walnuts, flour, and 2 Tbspn of sugar. Set aside.
3. In a bowl, combine the peaches, brown sugar, and 1 Tbspn of cornstarch. Toss to coat the peaches and set aside for at least ten minutes. Set aside.
4. In another small bowl, combine the olalliberries, remaining 1 tspn sugar, and remaining 1 tspn cornstarch. Set aside.
5. Roll out the pastry into 6 six-inch circles. Pat down about 2 Tbspn of the ground walnut mixture in the center of each pastry circle, leaving about 2 inches of a border.
6. Drain the fruit thoroughly. Arrange the sliced peaches on top of the ground walnut mixture in the pastry crusts and then top with berries.
7. Fold the sides of the galettes over the fruit by rotating and pinching the dough.
8. Brush the exposed dough on top with heavy cream and sprinkle the entire galette generously with turbinado sugar.
9. Bake for 30-40 minutes until the pastry is golden brown and the fruit is bubbling. Remove from baking stone and oven and place the galette on a wire cooling rack.
10. Warm the apricot jam and brush a thin layer over the fruit and top of galettes. Let the galettes cool a bit before serving, though they are best enjoyed warm with a scoop of maple nut ice cream on top. Galettes can be re-warmed in a 375 degree oven for 5 minutes.

Tip: When using fresh fruit, it's important that your peaches are ripe but firm--soft peaches will release too much liquid. Also make sure to drain the fruit as directed in the recipe to avoid soggy galettes.

Maple Nut Ice Cream
from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop
makes ~1 quart

for ice cream:
1 1/2 cups heavy or manufacturing cream
5 egg yolks
1 1/2 cups whole milk
2 Tbspn sugar
3/4 cup maple syrup (the darker the better)
1/8 tspn salt
1/4 tspn vanilla extract

1. Place cream in a bowl with a fine mesh sieve on top. Set aside.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together egg yolks until light. Set aside.
3. In a saucepan over medium heat, combine the milk and sugar. Bring to a bare simmer.
4. Whisking constantly, pour a small but steady stream of the heated milk into the egg yolks to temper. Do this slowly, while whisking quickly. Once the milk and egg yolks are combined, return to the saucepan and to the stove.
5. Heat the egg yolk and milk mixture while stirring constantly, making sure to scrape the bottom of the pan so that nothing burns or sticks. Slowly bring the mixture to a boil and cook until it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon, about one minute. Remove from heat immediately.
6. Pour the hot creme anglaise through the strainer into the cream. Stir to cool and then stir in the maple syrup, salt, and vanilla extract.
7. Chill the mixture thoroughly. Meanwhile, make the walnut mix-in.

for walnut mix-in:
1/2 cup + 1 Tbspn dark amber maple syrup
1 1/2 cup walnuts, toasted for 10 minutes in a 350 degree oven and then chopped coarsely
large pinch of salt

1. In a saucepan, cook the maple syrup until it comes to a full boil.
2. Stir the walnuts into the maple syrup and return to a full boil.
3. Remove the walnuts from heat and let them cool completely.
4. Freeze the ice cream mixture in your ice cream maker of choice. freeze it in your ice cream maker of choice. (Here's mine, which works like a dream, and I also have this one.)
5. In the last minute of churning, add the walnuts to the ice cream. Alternatively, fold the walnuts into the finished ice cream before returning the ice cream to the freezer.


Enjoy!