Julia Child 3rd Birthday Event

Julia Child’s Wine Poached Fruit in Chocolate Cups

Lisa at Champaign Taste is holding the 3rd Julia Child Birthday Event to celebrate Julia’s birthday.

Lisa’s first Julia Child Birthday Event was the very first blog event I ever entered, after starting Coffee & Cornbread about three years ago.

I didn’t want to miss it but the dish I wanted to prepare needed fresh pears. You can not hardly poach a pear without pears, but I did have one peach, one mango, several oranges and bananas.

I decided to use Julia’s formula for poaching fruit and substitute the one peach for pear. I didn’t want a bunch of it laying around the house anyway and it would be a perfect serving for two in her chocolate cups.

Julia’ s proportions for poaching fresh fruit are 6 tablespoons of sugar per cup of wine, according to the Julia Child’s Menu Cookbook.

You also add lemon juice and zest along with a cinnamon stick. Simmer the liquid about 5 minutes then put in the peeled fruit and maintain the heat on the fruit about 10 minutes at just barely below a simmer.

When you cut off the heat you cover the fruit and let it sit in the liquid covered at least 20 minutes, but can sit for several days in the refrigerator.

I used red wine and allowed the peach to sit in the refrigerator about 3 days.

For the chocolate cups Julia tells us to melt chocolate on a double boiler and then coat paper cupcake forms with the chocolate.

Here she is doing it in her book.

Here I am coating cups.

I am suppose to refrigerate and carefully peel the paper away when they become firm.
I tried, I really did, but I busted both cups on the edge.

I managed to place the fruit in the cup to hide the busted edges.

We are suppose to serve the poached fruit with a caramel sauce in the chocolate cup. Caramel sauce takes cream and I didn’t have any.

I did however have some store purchased caramel sauce, so I used that drizzled with some of the poaching liquid. I also had leftover chocolate which I made a few curls from to place on top.

It was wonderful. The poaching liquid mixed in the caramel was so good!

The only things I might do different is to make my own caramel next time and let the chocolate cups come to room temperature because while still cool they tended to be hard to eat.

Oh …and Julia also put a macaroon cookie under her pears. I am not one to like macaroons, so I felt it was great without it

Peach Buttermilk Smoothie

Now that summer is in full swing what better way to cool than with peach smoothies?

I love peach smoothies although we don’t grow peach trees and I have to sometimes set my grocery trips around fruit stands to get good peaches..but when you get a good peach watch out!

Peach Smoothe Recipe

Ingredients:
1 large peach, sliced and unseeded
1 cup of nonfat buttermilk
1 to 2 tablespoons sugar or splenda
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 ice cubes

Directions:
Blend all ingredients until smooth in a blender. Sometimes I also add some whip cream.

Yummy!