Baked Peaches

I've been on a real food kick recently. For my regular readers, that's probably a pretty obvious statement. It's not to say I am leaning towards becoming a food blog, I just really like sharing things I've come up with, or felt inspired by. For example, baked fruit seems to be popping up here and there, and I wanted to give it a whirl. My mom taught me how to make apple crisp at a pretty young age and it's a recipe I have mastered over the years. I applied basically the same ingredients in that recipe to this, and it turned out great! I'm excited to try it with apples this way, too, instead of chopping them as you do for crisp, you simply cut them and half to bake them. Easy peezy, lemon squeezy.

Baked Peaches
yields 6 servings
6 Freestone peaches 1/2 cup quick oats 3 tbsp brown sugar 1/4 cup butter, melted 2 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp allspice, of a pinch each of nutmeg, cloves and ginger
♥ Line a paring knife up with the line on your peach and cut around until your cut meets up, like you've sliced the peach in half. Hold the two pieces with each hand and gently twist until the two sides pull apart. One side will have a hollow, one side will have the pit. Gently scoop out the pit with a teaspoon. Do this to all six peaches and lay them out in a deep baking pan, as shown below. (Note, this technique only works well with freestone peaches, if you have others, you may need to wrestle the peach a bit to get the pits out.)

♥ Melt your butter in a small saucepan on low heat. Or, you can melt it in a medium sized bowl in the microwave for 30 seconds. Add brown sugar and spices and stir until well combined. Take off heat and add your oats and stir again. Feel free to add more oats if you'd like a crispier top. Drop mixture into the peach hollows, about a tbsp for each peach. Drizzle the remaining mixture on top of each peach if needed. Smooth out the oats, covering each peach top. 
♥ Bake in the oven at 350 degrees F for 25-30 minutes, or until skins start to separate from the fruit. Serve two slices of peach, warm, with either a small scoop of vanilla ice cream or freshly whipped cream. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Enjoy! xo