Looking for the right dessert to try in the restaurants Sydney Australia has to offer?  Of course, there are many to choose from, more than a few with strange names — Lamingtons, Dumplings and Cocky’s Joy, Castle Pudding, Pavlova, Fruit Gelato, Rock Cakes, and Dundee Cakes — but I favor Sydney Flambeed Fruits, with a bit of maple syrup.  You can try this dish in a restaurant or at home:  It takes less than thirty minutes to make and under ten minutes to cook.  Here’s a quick recipe how:

Let’s start with the ingredients.  Gather together the following: eight ounces of strawberries, large; three ripe peaches, firm; a couple of tablespoons of brandy not including extra for the flambeing portion.  A couple of tablespoons of icing sugar.  Follow that up with some maple syrup and a tub of Creme Fraiche — the creme fraiche is a French version of sour cream; twice as rich and thicker than British sour cream; it’s often used in soups or stew and sauces, but it may also be used over puddings and mixed into sweet dishes.

Once you’ve gathered the ingredients, here’s what we do with them:  Take the strawberries and hull them; take the peaches and halve them, removing stones, and cutting them into thick slices.  Put these into a large bowl.  Add the two tablespoons of brandy and mix thoroughly.  We’ll set this aside then for thirty minutes.

Next, prepare the barbeque.  If there are bars with wide spaces, then place a fine-mesh rack over the coals.  Let it get hot for a couple of minutes, then place the fruit pieces on the rack.  Cook them for two minutes.  After that, you’ll spoon the icing sugar into a sieve.  Dust the fruits a great deal with the sieve.  Turn the fruits over next, or at least until the sugar has camalized lightly.

Here comes the fun part.  Splash brandy, about an extra teaspoon’s worth, over the fruits.  The brandy will ignite when it hits the coals, so definitely keep back.  Let the flames die down between each spoonful.  Once that’s done, you can remove the fruits to serving bowls, then spoon over the creme fraiche, and then drizzle maple syrup atop the fruit.  It should serve six.

Of course, if all that preparation and danger from flames is not to your liking, then the best way to experience this dish is one of Sydney’s restaurants, a move I’d highly recommend.

A Recipe for a Sydney Dessert is a post from: Cool Comment