Originally I was going to have a recipe for grilled chicken with peach barbecue sauce. Sounds great, right? It was one of Gwyneth Paltrow’s recipes in Bon Appetit a month or so ago. The first thing I made from that issue was sweet corn gelato (from the letters section, where people ask how to make something really great from a restaurant), and it was not good. At all. Then I made GP’s barbecue sauce.

I tasted the sauce after it had finished cooking. It was pretty gross and not even a teensy bit sweet, so I added three tablespoons of brown sugar. That helped a little, but it still wasn’t that good. I added some more brown sugar and some bourbon. I cooked it some more. I marinated the chicken in it. Then I grilled the chicken… and the sauce was still just weird. We ate it, but we didn’t like it. I certainly wasn’t going to recommend it to anyone else.

So Southern Living saved the day again, with this recipe for peach enchiladas that apparently won the 2004 South Carolina State Cook-Off. Sounded good to me!

You can peel the peaches by sticking them in boiling water for about 30 seconds and then dunking them in ice water, but I thought it was easier to just peel the peaches with a knife after I quartered them. It doesn’t matter if they don’t look perfect.

The amount of butter in this recipe is a little Paula Deen-esque. I think you could probably reduce it a bit and still be fine. But if you do, make sure you reduce the amount of sugar, too.

After you have the peach quarters wrapped up in the crescent rolls, you put them in a baking dish and pour the butter-sugar-cinnamon (yum!) mixture over them. Then you pour Mountain Dew over the whole thing. Weird, right?

I think it would be fine if you used Sprite or some other citrusy soft drink instead of Mountain Dew. I halved the recipe because I really didn’t think we needed 16 peach enchiladas, which means it only used half a can. So you should probably use something someone in your house will drink.

These were super easy and fast to assemble, and they turned out really well — sort of like peach cobbler. Definitely a winner.

Peach enchiladas (Adapted slightly from Southern Living) Serves 8
2 large ripe peaches
1 8-ounce can crescent roll dough
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
6 ounces (half a regular can) Mountain Dew or other citrus-flavored soft drink

Preheat oven to 350. Peel and quarter the peaches.

Unroll the crescent roll dough and separate it into triangles using the perforated lines. Place one peeled peach quarter on the wide end of one of the triangles and roll dough around the peach. Place the roll, point side down, in a lightly greased baking pan (the one I used was about 8×6 inches). Continue until all peach quarters are rolled.

Melt the butter. Stir in sugar and cinnamon, then pour mixture over peach rolls. Pour Mountain Dew over rolls.

Bake for 30 minutes, or until rolls are golden and sauce is bubbly. Serve warm or at room temperature.