Baked Peaches with Cocoa and Biscuit Filling (Pesche Ripiene alla Piemontese)

Baked peaches with cocoa and biscuit filling are a super easy, yet impressive dessert that can be made in no time.

These baked peaches are so simple to make, you don’t even need to measure anything. Of course, I’ll give you rough measurements, but they’re not too important.

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I learned this recipe at an cooking school in Turin, Italy.

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You can have them prepped and ready to go into the oven in just minutes, but the result is like something that took some real effort!

As you may recall, I took a cooking class when I was in Turin a few weeks ago. It was held at Qubi by Chef Marco Giachello and Margherita Frari. While Chef Margherita taught us how to make a wonderful green sauce serve on top of softened Tomino cheese, Chef Marco taught us how to make these Italian style baked peaches. He had a great sense of humor, as you can see in this little clip!

I must admit, I didn’t love the flavor of the filling when I tasted the peaches in Turin, but I knew I wouldn’t, simply because I don’t like amaretti biscuits. The traditional Piedmontese filling is made with almond flavored amaretti biscuits.

Got lots of stone fruit? Try this apricot cake next time you have some to bake!

I’ve now made the Italian style baked peaches in my own kitchen and chose to use ladyfinger biscuits (savoiardi). Oh boy, what a difference! I loved this version, but if you love Amaretti, please use those as that is truly what should be used in the original recipe.

How to make Italian Style Baked Peaches

As I stated earlier, Marco told us that the amount of the ingredients is not critical, so this is a perfect recipe for a beginner cook, but flavorful enough to impress the most critical palate. However, you may tire of hearing me say this, but the quality of the ingredients are always critical in a recipe.

For example, the cocoa flavor is predominant in the filling, so please don’t use Hershey’s. If you don’t have a store near you that carries a better quality unsweetened cocoa, you can always resort to Amazon. I used Perugina, as it’s an Italian recipe, however, I mostly use this fantastic Barry cocoa from Amazon in other recipes. It will completely raise the bar in anything you use it in.

If you are looking for more peach creations, don’t miss this great collection I put together of delicious peach recipes using fresh, canned or frozen fruit!

 Baked Peaches with
Biscuit and Cocoa Filling

 adapted from Marco Giachello’s recipe              serves 8

FULL PRINTABLE RECIPE BELOW

Ingredients

• ripe, freestone peaches
• ladyfinger biscuits (savoiardi) or Amaretti
• sugar
• unsweetened cocoa powder
•  dark rum (or other liqueur)
• egg
• butter
• Demerara sugar/Sugar in the Raw 

Heat oven to 360 F (180 C)

Directions for Baked Peaches

Line a small tray with aluminum foil to ease clean up.

Cut the peaches in half, following the natural line that divides them. Twist them in half and remove the pit. Cut a little off the bottom of each half of the peaches so that they can sit flat on the tray and serving plate.

Put the pieces of peach that have been cut off into a small ramekin.

Using a small spoon or melon baller (I used a measuring spoon – teaspoon size), scoop out the center of each peach half and add the scooped flesh to the ramekin. Chop up the peaches in the ramekin into tiny pieces.

Move the peach halves to the lined tray.

In a medium bowl, crush the savoiardi (or amaretti) until they are in small pieces. However, do not over crush them into tiny crumbs.

Add the chopped peach flesh, cocoa, sugar, rum, egg and stir until well combined.

Fill each peach half evenly with the filling. Make sure to mound the filling onto the peaches so that the mixture doesn’t just fill the scooped out space, but sits on top, too.

Put a tiny dot of butter on top of the filling on each peach, then sprinkle with the Demerara or raw sugar.

Place into the oven in the middle shelf and bake for 20 to 30 minutes (shorter for firmer peaches, longer for softer peaches).

Remove the baked peaches when ready, and serve hot, warm or cold, preferably with a glass of dessert wine.

If you’d like to serve them as Chef Margherita did, place a fork on the plate and dust with cocoa powder, then remove the fork. You can also sprinkle some biscuit crumbs on the peach halves, if you like.

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For more information on cooking classes at Qubi Torino.

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