Peach Upside Down Cake
Posted: August 2nd, 2010 | Jessie | | Tags: peaches, upside-down-cake | 2 Comments »
I had such a wonderful time in Seattle and Portland. The weather was delightfully cool, the food was fantastic (and cheap), both cities were very bike friendly, and every person we met was nice. There are a number of meals that I want to try and recreate at home, but first I have to use up all the peaches we got with our CSA last week. On Thursday our fruit share contained a half peck of regular peaches and a half peck of donut peaches (the little disc-shaped peaches that look like UFOs). I love peaches, but there’s no way I could eat that many in the five or so days before they go bad. I considered making a peach pie, but it’s been so hectic at work since I got back that I haven’t had the energy to tackle pie crust in the evening.
I decided to make this peach upside down cake which has a very simple, easy-to-tackle-on-a-work-night, recipe. The most time consuming part of the process is peeling the peaches. If you never peeled peaches you want to quickly blanch them to loosen the skin. This video shows how. I was skeptical, but it really works!
The batter is very stiff. You’ll have to spread it over the peaches.
The cake got very brown. I put a tent of tinfoil over my cake when there was 6 minutes left on the clock. I would recommend tenting it when there are about 15 minutes left to bake. Having said that, the cake is incredibly moist and doesn’t taste burnt at all. It’s also an upside down cake, so you don’t really see the top (bottom).
If you’ve never made an upside down cake before you might be startled by the appearance of the top of the cake when you invert it. They tend to have an uncooked look around the pieces of fruit. Don’t freak out. If a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean, then it’s done. The moisture from the fruit causes this odd look.
Peach Upside-Down-Cake
Heavily adapted from Allrecipes.com
1/4 cup butter – melted
1/4 cup sugar (I used granulated – brown sugar would also work)
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
5 fresh peaches – peeled, pitted and halved
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/4 tsp. freshly ground nutmeg
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 sour cream
Directions
1. Blanche and peel peaches. Cut in half.
2. Melt 1/4 cup butter and pour in an 8 inch square pan. Sprinkle with sugar and nutmeg. Arrange peach halves, cut side down, in pan.
3. Preheat oven to 375º.
4. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Stir together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ground ginger, ground nutmeg, and salt. Add flour mixture to creamed mixture alternately with sour cream, beating well after each addition. Spread batter over peaches.
5. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until a cake tester inserted comes out clean and the top of the cake springs back when touched (my cake took 35 minutes). Remove cake from oven, and let stand in pan for 5 minutes. Run a knife around the edge of the cake to loosen. Invert onto a serving platter.
I swear finding your site was the best thing! Just yesterday, my BF asked me to find a peach recipe for some of his peaches he has left over from the farmers market and voila! I love recipes like this that only require me to buy one thing from the store (sour cream)! Thanks again for all the great recipes!
Thanks, Kat! That’s so sweet!