August's Peach Ice-Cream Pie

Here is the pie of the month for August! This easy freeze-ahead dessert comes from the June 2017 issue of Southern Living magazine. They refer to it as 'peach melba ice-cream pie', because traditionally 'melba' is a dessert of peaches, raspberry sauce, and vanilla ice cream. This pie has the peaches and vanilla ice cream. It does not the raspberry sauce; rather, it has raspberry sorbet as one of it's layers.

The best way to prepare this pie is to make it a day ahead. It does involve quite a bit of chilling time. The good news is that it's really easy to put together with very little baking time. Take the time to freeze the layers properly for clean, sharp layers when you serve the pie slices to your guests. Enjoy the taste of summer with this delicious peach ice cream pie!

Bon Appetit!

Tips:

I could not find Anna's thin almond cookies, so I used a different brand of thin almond cookies. The crust turned out perfect!

When pressing the cookie crumb mixture into a pie plate, I like to use the bottom of a 1 cup measuring cup to do this. Use that measuring cup to gently press down the puffed up crust when you remove it from the oven.

Preparation time is 25 minutes. Total time is 12 hours and 55 minutes (including 12 hours freezing).

Ingredients:

1 (5.25 ounce) package thin almond cookies (such as Anna's)
1 cup salted roasted almonds
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
4 cups vanilla ice cream, softened and divided
2 medium peaches, divided
1 pint raspberry sorbet, softened
1 cup fresh raspberries (about 4 ounces)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Place the cookies, almonds, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food processor; process until finely ground, about 15 seconds. Drizzle butter over top of the mixture; pulse until combined, 5 to 6 times. Press crumb mixture into the bottom and up the sides of a lightly greased 9 1/2 inch deep-dish glass or ceramic pie plate. Bake in preheated oven until browned, about 12 minutes. Gently press crust back down into pie plate, if needed. Place on a wire rack, and cool completely, about 30 minutes.

Place 2 cups of the ice cream in a bowl. Peel and finely dice 1 of the peaches; stir diced peach into ice cream. Spread the ice-cream mixture over crust. Freeze about 2 hours. Spread the sorbet over the ice-cream mixture; freeze about 2 hours. Spread the remaining 2 cups of vanilla ice cream over the sorbet. Freeze 8 hours or overnight. To serve, let the pie stand at room temperature about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, peel and slice the remaining peach into 1/4-inch thick slices. Arrange the peach slices around the edge of the pie. Mound the raspberries in the center of the pie.