Fresh Peach Dessert

My darling friend let me pick a bunch of delicious peaches off of her tree the other day, so I was thrilled to make one of my favorite summer/ fall desserts.  If you're a peach lover, I am sure you will love it also.  In my book you simply can't go wrong with fresh peaches, cream cheese, and nilla wafers all involved in one delightful concoction. mmmmm....

The unfortunate part about this fabulous recipe is that it's a bit on the time consuming process; not difficult at all, just time consuming.  Plan on making this while you work on other projects in the meantime. 

Ingredients
Crust:

• 1 cup crushed Vanilla Wafers
• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup chopped pecans
• 1 cube butter, melted

Filling:

• 11 oz. cream cheese or neufchatel cheese (lower fat but works great for baking), softened
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 small container cool whip

Topping:

• 5 cups fresh, peeled and sliced peaches
• 1/4 cup sugar
• lemon juice
• orange juice
• 3 TBS cornstarch
• 2 TBS butter
• pinch of salt

Directions

Preheat oven to 350.

In a large bowl, sprinkle sliced peaches with fresh lemon juice (I used 1/2 a lemon) and the sugar.  Set aside and allow the mix to stand for an hour while you make the crust and filling.

Mix together crust ingredients in a bowl, and spread into a 9x13 pan. 

Bake for 25 minutes, or until crust is lightly golden on the edges.

Allow crust to cool while you start working on the filling.  Mix all ingredients together with beaters until smooth and creamy.

Spread over cooled crust.

Are you drooling yet?

Put the pan back in the fridge to cool while you finish the peach topping.

Strain the juice from the peaches and set peaches aside.

Add fresh lemon and orange juice to the strained juice until you have 1 cup of juice.  (I used the remaining half of a lemon, and filled the rest with orange juice).

Place juice in a saucepan, add cornstarch and stir well to blend.

Cook over low heat until mixture thickens, stirring constantly.  Remove from heat, and fold in butter and fruit.

Allow mixture to cool (I let it sit in the fridge for a little while) and then spread mixture over the cooled filling.

Check out those beautiful layers...

Enjoy!

~PW

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