Monday, August 12, 2013

"Hey Kevin-This is how you win a YM/YW iron chef" grilled pound cake with peaches and caramel sauce

Of the recipes I post very rarely do I come up with the recipe completely by myself.  That really isn't my strength when it comes to recipes.  I think my strength is in being able to find recipes that are yummy and then being able to tweak them to make them better.  But this recipe I made up completely by myself.  I'm sure there are recipes out there that are similar but this is one that was born out of necessity for me and a group of 12- 18 year old young men and women.  You see about 2 years ago I was in charge of our YM/YW combined activity (Is there anyone out there who reads this blog who isn't LDS and doesn't know what a YM/YW combined activity is? I'm thinking not so I won't explain.)  I decided to do an iron chef activity.  It was during the month of August so I chose peaches as my secret ingredient since they are in season this time of year.  I had asked 3 other youth leaders if we could use their houses for the kids to create a dish using peaches.  Two were YM leaders and one was a YW leader.  I let them know what the secret ingredient was so I didn't have an unfair advantage and told them to have some general ingredients on hand.  I also told them they could either let the kids come up with their own creations or they could steer them to something else they had the ingredients for.  I split the youth into 4 teams, gave them the rules, a bag of peaches and an hour to be back at the church where the bishopric would anonymously judge the creations.  So after an hour we came back to the church.  One team had made peach salsa & peach parfaits, my team had made this recipe- with some guidance from me I admit and the two other teams had both made waffles with peaches on top.  Can you guess which two teams had made the waffles- yeah it was the teams with the YM leaders.  Then when my team's grilled pound cake & peaches won one of those YM leaders- Kevin- jokingly accused me of cheating.  But I can't help it is my culinary creativity went beyond waffles!  But I guess in Kevin's defense if we had a tire changing contest I'm pretty sure he would clean my clock. 
So even though I never dated Kevin and he is now a member of our bishopric, I decided to name it after him because he gave me such a hard time about it.  And I recently made this for Eric's "Ultimate Feast" birthday dinner (That is another post) and it reminded me how yummy this is so I thought it was time to share it with the world.
"Hey Kevin- This is how you win a YM/YW iron chef" grilled pound cake with peaches and caramel sauce
sliced pound cake
halved and pitted fresh peaches
melted butter
cinnamon/sugar mixed
caramel sauce- I made this one for the award winning recipe but you could use store bought or even go get some from Leatherby's- yum-me!
whipped cream- again I made fresh but you can use the kind in a squirt can or dare I suggest it, use at your own risk- whipped topping
Spread melted butter on both sides of the pound cake and then sprinkle with cinnamon/ sugar mixture.  Spray a heated to medium grill with cooking spray- note: make sure your grill has been scrapped of any savory remnants before you grill the cake and peaches or else your dessert will taste like fish or chicken or beef and that for sure won't win you any contests. Then grill both the pound cake and the peaches for a few minutes on each side- so the pound cake gets grill marks and the peaches are soft and sugary but not burnt and mushy.  Transfer to a serving dish and drizzle with caramel and top with whipped cream and a dash of cinnamon.
Here are some pictures from our YM/YW iron chef were this recipe was born!
 Making the caramel sauce
 Grilling up the peaches and pound cake
 Everyone making last minute adjustments at the church
 Our award winning dish on the left
 The tasting!
 The "sore loser" Kevin is the one on the right!:)
 The award winning team with the plate licked clean
And this one is just for fun!  (Some of the youth got a hold of my camera!)