loaded with sugar...

... which is why it was so good. The recipe I was making at work yesterday: designed to be served as a parfait, and would be really pretty, layered in clear glass to look festive and appetizing. But swamped with empty sugar calories.

I spent the day being baffled as to why they would print and distribute a recipe that called for fresh peaches in late October. When it could have come out in June when local, ripe, juicy, sweet, home-grown, fresh from the orchard, delicious Georgia peaches were in season. We're known for that! People have the trees actually growing in their yards, and can walk out the back door and pick one to eat immediately, right there, on the spot. While the ones available for sale were picked two weeks ago, shipped green as a gourd, hard as a brickbat, and often go from green to rotten, never ever becoming edible.

Lots of customers, as they stood eating the dessert that was served in little sample cups reported they had put summer produce in the freezer. Could make the recipe using some of the locally grown, sweet peaches they had stockpiled when they were in season. Admittedly, the product we were serving was pretty good, using a bag of frozen peaches, that were  likely picked and processed at the season peak. So using locally grown, frozen would be tasty.

But the sugar caution: everything is loaded, if you go by the recipe. You could substitute to reduce the amount, but not something you would feed a person who has medical issues with processing refined sugar. And you need to be sure that the completed recipe leaves the house, so you won't have regrets later from loss of self control.

I failed to put the recipe in my pocket, so the following is just a guesstimate.

A cinnamon coffee cake from the bakery - in an 8 inch aluminum pan. Crumble the entire cake.
Four cups of fresh peaches, in about 1 inch dice. Easy to cut the frozen ones when semi-thawed.
One cup of maple syrup, plus one cup of white grape juice (or wine if you dare.)Simmer the liquids about ten minutes or so, add the peaches and cook three to five minutes more. Let cool.
One eight ounce bowl whipped topping thawed.
You see where this is going, right? So rich you could serve it For The Meal, instead of After.
The picture on the laminated recipe card has it served in tall skinny clear glass containers, and it would be eye-candy as a dessert after a home cooked meal, so even though your invitees were popping their buttons, they would eat it anyway. The recipe claims it serve 8

You just layer the ingredients in the tall slim glasses. I confess to once making some sort of pudding/parfait thing years ago, in something shaped like champagne flutes. You could not get your spoon to the bottom of the narrow glass, so you missed the bottom third of the food. Be sure the spoon will scrape up every single crumb before you start your layering process or they will be asking for drinking straws, knives, chopsticks, anything to get the last bit.

The instructions we were given were to only make three layers: cake crumbs, liquid peach mixture and whipped topping.  Reserve about one-fourth cup of crumbled cake for topping. Stacked up in a casserole dish, measuring 9 x9, and very full. You need to let the peaches cool before adding topping or it will melt. Honestly: it looked nasty when severed up in the little two ounce sample cups. In the same way lasagna looks wonderful in the casserole, and disgusting when you serve it onto the plate. But makes your taste buds happy nonetheless.