Peaches

Our peach tree was behind the outhouse at the edge of the garden. Two peaches was the average this tree had on it each year. I watched it bloom then produce the two maybe three peaches each year hoping for more. It always had several blooms giving me hope that there would be peaches.
My Grandmother could make a cobbler out of any kind of fruit in the world. She always had the basic ingrediants for cobblers and plain cake. Plain cake was made many times to be covered by the fruit of the season. Neighbors that had apples, peaches or strawberries would give them to her. We had a small peach tree that never had more than three peaches on it. The apple tree we had was basically the same when it came to bearing fruit. Buying fruit trees was something my grandmother did not think she could afford. Thus the ones that had grown happened to be there because she stuck a seed in the ground. The tree grew, but did not want to grow fruit. Grandmother was always willing to pick up off the ground the peaches that neighbors were not going to use. Thus we had peach cobblers for a season many times. How she did them amazes me. She had no recipe only the one in her head. She had cooked long enough that measuring was something she didn't have to do.

Easy Peach Cobbler

Ingredients:

1 stick (4 ounces) butter, melted

1 cup plus 3 tablespoons granulated sugar, divided

1 cup self rising flour

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

 3 to 4 ripe peaches, peeled, pitted, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

*Preparation:

Heat oven to 375°.

Pour melted butter into a 2-quart baking dish (11x7 or 8-inch square). In a mixing bowl, combine 1 cup of the sugar, the flour,stir to blend. Stir in the milk and vanilla until blended. Pour the batter over the melted butter. Toss the peaches with the remaining 3 tablespoons of sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon. Arrange the peach slices over the batter. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. The top will be browned and the cake will begin to pull away from the sides of the pan. Serve warm with icecream.
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Peach Icecream

1 quart milk plus 1 cup (or more depending on amount of fruit to be used)

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1 small can evaporated milk

1 pint whipping cream

1 cup sugar

3 tablespoons vanilla flavoring

3 cups (or less) mashed peaches (fresh), mixed with 3/4 cups sugar and juice of 1 lemon

Combine first 6 ingredients and freeze to a mush in an electric or hand-turned freezer. Add peaches mixture and freeze hard. Remove dasher and pack with ice and salt until ready to serve. Keeps well in deep freeze without getting icy.