White Peach Pate de Fruit

My brother has a white peach tree in his backyard that seems to explode with fruit every summer.   Kind of ironic that its bounty is so abundant since he doesn't really tend to it that much.  When the fruits are ripe everyone in the family stops by his house to pick peaches fresh off the branches.  This year's harvest seemed to ripen a lot quicker than usual.  Not wanting all that juicy goodness to go to waste I used the white peaches to make pate de fruit, a French fruit jelly.    

The pate de fruit and I have a checkered past.    A few Christmases ago my sister and I  read about them on Alexis Stewart's blog.  We then suffered from delusions of grandeur and foolishly thought we could make a few batches to give away as holiday gifts.  Easy, right?  Easy, wrong!  Little did we know that it wasn't so  simple and unfortunately it was a costly lesson.  Down the trash bin went our hard earned money in the form of gourmet frozen fruit purees, glucose and tartaric acid cooked to a hard, sticky goo.

But this time was different: a) the peaches were free and the only special ingredient I had to buy was Certo liquid pectin (five bucks at my local Safeway), and b) I used a recipe from the queen of all yummy things, Helen from Tartelette.  Once again her recipe was fool proof and the pate came out fantastic.  Exactly the right texture and flavor I was looking for.  Think the pate de fruit and I have reached an accord.

White Peach Pate de Fruit (adapted from Tartelette)

380 gr peach puree (weight after you remove skin, pits and processed)
1 tbls lemon juice

400 gr sugar, divided

5 tbls liquid pectin (I used Certo)

Line an 8x8 inch pan with parchment paper and set aside.

Put peach puree and lemon juice in a heavy bottom saucepan.  Add 100 gr of the sugar and bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly.  Cook mixture until it registers 113F on a candy or instant-read thermometer.  

Add the remaining 300 gr of sugar and the liquid pectin and slowly bring the mixture to 200F over medium heat.   Lower the heat a little and keep the temperature at 200F for 3 minutes.  Keep stirring!

Turn the heat back up and bring the mixture to 223F.  Keep it there for an additional 3-4 minutes, turning heat down if necessary to maintain the temperature.  

Remove from heat and pour in to the parchment lined pan.  Let cool completely (I left mine overnight).

Cut in to any shape you want using a cookie cutter or knife.  Roll cut pate de fruit in sugar to coat.