Fresh Peach Caramels

July’s ingredients for the Improv Cooking Challenge are PEACHES & CREAM. Initially, I was quite excited for this challenge because I have a lovely white peach tree in my garden. Sadly, however, the fruit never set on after it blossomed early Spring, & now it looks like this:
Never fear… a #10 of Del Monte canned diced peaches is available at Costco any time of year… So that’s what I used for the Peach Caramel Rum Sauce.Darn heat/humidity! The “caramels” refused to set up overnight… But it did make a lovely sauce to spoon over vanilla bean ice cream!

Determined to fix caramels with fresh peaches, I bought a few pounds at Sprouts. After peeling/pitting four of them, the halves were tossed into the blender to make the purée. The (nearly 2 1/2 cups) purée was slowly cooked down to 1/2 cup (took almost 2 hours over medium-low heat on a humid day…)This is the recipe I used, and the following pics will illustrate the steps:
Stir the sugar & corn syrup into the peach reduction. Cook over medium-low heat until thermometer reaches 234°.Without breaking the boil, stir in 1/2 cup of cream. Return to 234°.Again, stir in the last 1/2 cup of cream, but this time let the thermometer reach 244°. Pour into buttered 8x8 pan.Allow to cool & slice into caramels.
As you can see, these caramels remained a little soft in our desert heat, but they tasted soooooooo good!
…and now, here are some more PEACHES & CREAM recipes from my fellow bloggers:

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