TWD—Spiced Peach Upside-Downer

This cake was supposed to be the Cranberry Upside-Downer for Tuesday’s With Dorie.  Cranberries say holidays to me.  They aren’t quite in season yet.  Plus, I don’t want them to be—I’m still “playing” summer.  It’s supposed to be in the high 80’s all week!

We’ve sure had some great peaches lately.  Kevin’s brother gave us a box of peaches from their tree.  Those were some of the best peaches I’ve ever had.  It’s amazing how much more flavorful fruit is when it comes from homegrown and cared for trees!

I made this Spiced Peach Upside Cake after Sabrina from Superfluous chose Cranberry Upside-Downer.  With some of the peaches we received from Blaine, I decided to make peach butter.  I’m sorry that I didn’t write down the recipe, which I kind of made up as I went along.  But I did get the gist of the idea from www.pickyourown.org.  Basically, I just peeled and diced 25 peaches or so and put them in the crockpot with about two cups of sugar and some spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger.  I left that in the crockpot for the better part of a day.  That evening I took about half the mixture and pureed it in the blender.  I wanted some to be smooth, as a “butter” would be and I wanted some left chunky.  Both made close to a quart each.  The smell throughout the house alone was worth making the peach butter!  In fact, the next morning, I put the pureed butter back in the crockpot just to simmer it some more for the smell alone!  (It tastes great, too!)

Last Friday I was asked to help with a dinner for a neighbor who had a death in their family.  I quickly volunteered to make dessert and a salad.  I made this (pictured above) Spiced Peach Upside Down Cake that day and I sweetened up some cream and whipped it and sent it off to the neighbors.  I almost felt a little bummed (and worried) that I had no idea what the cake tasted like and if it was good or not.  But I was happy with how it looked, so I figured it couldn’t be bad. 

The only 8 inch round pan I had was a springform pan, so I double lined it with foil and proceeded as directed, sort of.  I followed the recipe, but decided to do the top/bottom different.  Instead of melting the butter and cooking the sugar with it, I just melted four tablespoons of butter (six seemed like a lot!) and poured it into the pan.  Then I sprinkled three tablespoons of brown sugar over that.  I sliced up a few peeled peaches and lined those around the pan as well as sprinkled 1/3 cup (instead of 1/4 cup) of toasted chopped pecans around the pan.  Then I also spread one cup of the chunky peach butter over that.  I made the cake batter just as instructed and spread it in the pan.  The cake took 54 minutes to bake, smelled great and came out of the pan beautifully.  I haven’t asked the neighbor if they liked the cake as I thought that was certainly unimportant compared to their family loss. 

But I did keep wondering how it was.  So Monday I caved in and made the cake again.  This time just for fun I made the cake in a six inch pan and three four inch pans that I have. 

I forgot to add the chunky peach butter to the six inch cake (bummer!) and will say after tasting both that the cake is definitely better WITH the added spicy peaches.  I only put half a tablespoon or so of melted butter in the bottom of each of the smaller pans and about half a tablespoon of brown sugar.  So I’d like to convince myself that these cakes are much more healthy—that and I used 2% milk instead of whole milk.  Little rebel me.  ;) 

I made some ice cream to go with the cake on Monday.  I wanted to see what the peach butter would be like in an ice cream.  It’s GOOD!

Spiced Peach Butter Ice Cream, by Katrina at Baking and Boys!

3 cups half and half

3/4 cup sugar

pinch salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup spiced peach butter (I used the pureed one)

Heat one cup of half and half on the stove in a saucepan with the sugar and salt, just until the sugar is dissolved.  Whisk together the remaining two cups of half and half, the vanilla and the peach butter in a medium sized bowl.  Pour the heated half and half with the dissolved sugar into the bowl and whisk to combine everything.  In a large bowl, make an ice bath.  Set the bowl with the ice cream mixture into the large bowl with ice water.  Stir the ice cream mixture every few minutes.  It becomes chilled in 10-15 minutes.  Churn in ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions.  Freeze the ice cream in an airtight container.

This is a great cake with many other fruity possibilities.  I love the bit of tartness in cranberries and will probably make this again when the season is right for it.  You can get the recipe for this cake on Sabrina’s blog (linked above).  Check out the TWD blogroll and see what the other’s have done with this Upside-Downer!

I’ll leave you with a beautiful sunrise we had here the other day!