Food, Books, Gardens & More: Perfectly Peaches!

On the way home from my book group weekend, we stopped at Bishop's Orchards in Guilford, Connecticut to buy some wonderful foodstuffs. They have great produce and tempting high end food items. Worth a visit if you are on the shoreline of Connecticut.

One of the items on my list was PEACHES. One of those baskets of utility peaches, so I could spend my day off making peachy things.

First thing - Summer Peach Cake. I have the Cooks Illustrated Cookbook and they have great recipes, all of which I want to try (all 890 pages...). The recipe can also be found on line here. I love their little preambles....why this recipe works. This recipe has this introduction:

Why this recipe works:

To achieve the right texture for our Peach Cake, we sprinkled the peach slices with sugar and baked them in a very hot oven until they lost most of their moisture. Tossing the cooled peaches with crushed panko bread crumbs sopped up the gooey, viscous film that the peaches had acquired in the… read more

To achieve the right texture for our Peach Cake, we sprinkled the peach slices with sugar and baked them in a very hot oven until they lost most of their moisture. Tossing the cooled peaches with crushed panko bread crumbs sopped up the gooey, viscous film that the peaches had acquired in the oven. (The panko gets incorporated into the cake as the peach cake cooks.) Adding some peach schnapps to the batter boosted the peach flavor and gave us a peach cake recipe that could be made even with not-so-perfect peaches.

So the first thing I do when preparing a new recipe is read it over and do any prep first. Like preheating my oven, preparing my pans (9 inch spring-form & baking sheet), getting things to room temperature (eggs) and melting my butter (recipe says to melt & cool).

Now to tackle the peaches. The recipe calls for 2 1/2 pounds of peaches. Mine are large peaches. So what does 2 1/2 pounds translate to in "number of large peaches". I found this helpful fact

1 pound of fresh Peaches will equal: - 3 medium Peaches, or - 2 cups sliced Peaches. from Westview Orchards (came up first in my search, sounded authoritative).

I translated that into 6 large peaches. I think. I just cut them up.

Thought I was keeping track but can't be sure. What I did do was to first slice 24 1/2 inch peach wedges as instructed by the recipe and gently tossed them with 2 tablespoons peach schnapps, 2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice and 1 tablespoon granulated sugar. These are for arranging nicely on top. I put these aside. Then I needed peaches for the middle layer. So I sliced 4 more peaches and cut the wedges into 3-4 chunks each. These I tossed with 3 tablespoons schnapps, 2 teaspoons lemon juice and 2 tablespoons granulated sugar. I was preheating the oven to 425 degrees F and prepared a baking sheet by covering it with aluminum foil and sprayed with coconut oil spray. On this I spread the chunks of peaches with the juices into a single layer.

They baked until they were caramelizing and thickening at the edges of the pan, about 30 minutes. These came out of the oven and were set aside on a hot mat on my kitchen table to cool.

I reduced my oven to 350 degrees at this point.

Then it was time to prepare the batter.

I whisked the flour, baking powder and salt together in a bowl. Set that aside.

Then whisked 1/3 cup granulated sugar, brown sugar and eggs together in a bowl until it was thick and thoroughly combined. At this point, in went the butter I had melted earlier. I used the whisk and combined it well. Next went the sour cream and vanilla extract (didn't do the almond).

Again whisking well until combined. Then the flour mixture and liquid mixture get whisked together until just combined (do not over mix). Set this aside.

Now we go back to those chunks of peaches that have been cooling. Sprinkly panko crumbs on top and gently mix together. The panko absorbs all the deliciousness of the caramelized liquid and is absorbed into the batter when cooking so no-one is the wiser.

Now we put this all together in the spring form pan. First I spread half the batter on the bottom. Then I gently spread the panko-ed peach chunks on top of that for my middle layer.

I then spread the remaining batter on top. Then for our final pretty detail....I arranged my reserved peach wedges, slightly overlapping, in a ring around the outside of the top of the batter, Then arranged another ring in the inside. 24 wedges was the perfect amount. So professional looking!

Into the 350 degree oven this goes.

The recipe calls for 50 to 60 minutes until a toothpick inserted in center comes clean. I first set the oven for 50 minutes. Obviously not ready. Added 10 minutes. Still clearly not ready. Then kept adding 5 minutes or so to the timer and checking. Honestly it took about an hour and a half all together! And I think my oven usually runs hot. But it looks pretty and perfectly done. Hope it tastes good later!

Next - Peach jam....

There are a lot of recipes on line. But I don't like using pectin when I make jam. Or too much sugar. So I'm going with Martha Stewart's take, recipe here. I'll process this jam so I can donate some to sell at our church fair and have some to give as gifts this Christmas. Martha has this to say about the recipe:

Preserve orchard-fresh flavor with nothing but sugar, lemon, and salt.

I really was making both these items at the same time. Once I got the cut up peaches in the oven for the recipe above I started to peel and cut up peaches for my jam.

I basically doubled Martha's recipe. So I prepared about 20 peaches. As I went along I pulsed them n my food processor and dumped them in my large pot.

I peeled them directly into one of our large compost bins so that saved time for clean up. (yeah maybe it's gross displaying a picture of my compost bin...)

Then I mixed in roughly 2 1/2 cups of granulated sugar, a teaspoon of course salt and a "pour" of peach schnapps. (the schnapps was out from the previous recipe so I figured, "why not", It will intensify the peach flavor and the alcohol will burn off).

I put the big pot on medium on my stove top and let it slowly come to a boil.

This took a long time. I stirred now & then. And then I just let it gently boil for a long time. Lots longer than the 12 minutes called for in the recipe. Maybe an hour. I let it boil down in size and become a bit thick. Really I stopped cooking it once I had finished everything else in the kitchen. I finished the cake (see above), washed all my dishes and prepared the canning jars and lids.