peach Archives - Patent & the Pantry

Peach-blueberry muffins

August 22, 2011 12 Comments

Oh hey!

Just popping in with some bran muffins.

I know I’m a bit of a baking freak, but I think I reached new lows (highs?) when I baked these up yesterday in the 30-degree heat. But I had a flat of peaches and they’re all pretty much perfectly ripe at this exact moment and I need to come up with ways to use them before I have to toss them. The original plan was a streusel peach cake, or a rustic tart, but by the time I got back from brunch with a friend and did some other chores, it seemed a bit late to be putting together a cake. And pastry? Well, that’s probably not going to be great when your kitchen is that blazing hot. (Plus, you know, pastry. We’re not the best of friends. One day, I hope. One day.)

Anyway, I’ve been making these peach bran muffins of Julie’s for awhile now. They’re what I think muffins should be. Healthy, full of good-for-you ingredients like bran and not too much sugar. Not those cake-in-disguise muffins, which I know are tasty, but really are just cupcakes with a different name.

I grew up eating Sunny Boy Muffins. Warm from the oven, cracked open with a little pat of butter. I can still taste them. (And this serves as a good reminder that I really need to track down some Sunny Boy; there is nothing like the taste of nostalgia.) So, I like a good, solid muffin. And these deliver.

I’ve made them several ways: with buttermilk, with plain yogurt thinned with some milk, with white sugar, with brown and with a mixture of the two. And here’s what I’ve decided: pretty much any way you go, these are good, hearty muffins. But, since I rarely have buttermilk on hand, I usually go with the yogurt-milk mix and I think I like the dual-sugar combination. Julie’s recipe calls for one peach, but I usually double that (or 1.5 that, if the peaches are really big) because I like the extra fruit. And this time around I added in some blueberries, which I just happened to have around. I’m sure other fruit would also be fantastic.

I like making muffins and cupcakes but an ongoing issue I have is that I appear to have some sort of miniature muffin tin. I mean, it looks all normal sized but whenever a recipe says it will make 12 muffins, I end up with anywhere between 16 and 20. At first, I thought it was just me and I was maybe not filling the tins enough. And then I realized it happens so consistently that I’m now pretty confident that it’s this tin. I can’t quite justify getting a new one, though.

All this to say, the recipe says it makes 12 muffins. I got 18 out of it, after dropping the cooking time almost in half. If your muffin tin runs on the small side and you have leftover batter after all the cups are filled, lower the cooking time to around the 13- or 14-minute mark. You can always bake them longer, but you don’t want to overbake them.

OK, go forth, make muffins. Enjoy.

Fresh Peach Bran Muffins

from Dinner With Julie.

2 cups All Bran cereal
1 3/4 cups buttermilk or plain yogurt, thinned with milk
1/2 cup sugar (white or brown)
1/4 cup canola oil
1 large egg
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
pinch salt
1 or 2 peaches, chopped (or additional fruit, as desired)

In a large bowl, stir together the cereal and buttermilk; let stand for 10 minutes, until soft. (Sometimes I drizzle in a bit more milk if this mixture seems really, overly solid. Never had any problems with a little additional liquid.) Preheat the oven to 375F.

Stir the sugar, oil and egg into the bran mixture. Add the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and stir until almost combined; add the peach and stir just until blended.

Divide the batter among 12 muffin cups that have been lined with paper liners or sprayed with nonstick spray. Bake for 25 minutes, until golden and springy to the touch. Makes a dozen muffins.

Baking, Desserts

Fruit Cobbler Cake

October 17, 2010 2 Comments

Look! It’s more peach-related baking.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. I only had one peach by the time I finally got around to this cake from Julie over at Dinner with Julie, so I had to get a little creative with the other fruit I had bought from the Farmer’s Market the weekend before, adding a nectarine and some blackberries to the mix.

(And I feel a little bit badly posting this since peach season is just about over for the year. Sorry!)

Julie’s version used rhubarb (and I kind of wish I had thought of this recipe when that fruit was still available. Must keep in mind for next year), but pretty much any fruit will work. The only adjustment that needs to be made is to the amount of sugar you sprinkle on over top. Rhubarb, with it’s tart flavour, needs more sugar. These needed barely any. And in an effort to get creative, I actually used large-grained raw sugar, which probably gave it a much more caramel-like flavour on top.

As you can see in the photo, it, uh, caramelized the edges of the cake. Actually, truth be told, I was freaking out the whole thing was going to burn before the centre was finally cooked. But people seemed to like it quite a bit (favouring the edges where it hit more of the batter and less of the fruit), but next time I’d like to try it with straight-up sugar to see what kind of difference it makes.

I liked the idea of this cake, the way it bakes up around the fruit, enveloping it even. And it didn’t disappoint.

It’s definitely one to keep in mind when next summer gets going or, even better, when you are craving a taste of summer and the fruit isn’t exactly ripe and delicious enough to eat on its own. Baking it into this cake will elevate it, I swear.

This recipe, like so many good ones, comes from Julie over at Dinner with Julie. (And hey, while you’re over there, check out her peach bran muffins recipe, which I also made and was fabulous.)

Fruit Cobbler Cake

1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cup sugar
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoon baking powder
pinch salt
2 – 4 cups assorted fruit (rhubarb, strawberries, peaches, plums, nectarines, blackberries etc. I used a peach, a nectarine and a scattering of blackberries in my version)
1/8 to 1/2 cup sugar (depending on the tartness of the fruit; rhubarb, for example, would need a greater amount of sugar)

Preheat the oven to 350F.

In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until well combined and starting to get fluffly. Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each, then beat in the vanilla.

Add the flour, baking powder and salt and stir by hand or beat on low speed just until combined; the batter will be thick. Spread into a 9″x13″ pan that has been sprayed with nonstick spray, and scatter the fruit over top. Sprinkle with sugar and bake for 45-50 minutes, until the cake is golden and the cakey parts springy to the touch.

Makes one large cake.

Baking, Desserts

Peach Upside Down Cake

October 10, 2010 6 Comments

In a rash move, I bought a whole bunch of peaches a couple of weeks ago. And then, when those had run out, I bought some more. Some of you may have already enjoyed the Peach, Prosciutto, Rosemary and Goat Cheese flatbread, which resulted from this sudden and inexplicable need to purchase peaches. But, wait, there’s more! Since it became clear I was going to need to bake with some of them, as they all began to ripen at once, I became fascinated by the idea of making a Peach Upside Down Cake.

I never really understood the love affair with pineapple upside down cakes (maybe it’s my aversion to maraschino cherries), but I do like the idea of fruit getting baked into the bottom of a cake and then being turned out so it becomes the decorative topping. They’re just so darn pretty.

Now would be a good time to praise my digital kitchen scale because, well, this recipe is almost completely in weights, with the exception of the eggs and vanilla.

That said, I absolutely do love my digital kitchen scale, which was a gift from my mum one Christmas. It is, by far, one of the most used gadgets in my kitchen. It’s super handy for measuring butter (since I always have to cut mine to measure because we don’t have “sticks” of butter up here and it gets tricky sometimes trying to carve off the appropriate amount from the blocks we have up here) and I now use it exclusively when making no-knead bread (post coming soon) because I can just tare it off before adding the next ingredient. And, of course, a lot of European recipes only use weights, which makes the scale essential.

I don’t usually encourage people to purchase additional things for the kitchen (cough, cough, except for the clearly essential rasp, which I have talked often about; mine is from Lee Valley Tools), but I do believe this is a useful tool. Ok, moving on.

This cake was seriously delicious and oh-so-pretty. The brown sugar and butter-topping created a moist, topping and the peaches were perfect. The cake was relatively light and nicely spiced, so the perfect complement to the rich topping and cooked fruit.

And, perhaps more importantly, it was really quiet easy. But the gorgeous presentation doesn’t suggest that at all, making it an ideal cake for sharing with friends. (Which I did!)

I have no idea how I stumbled on to this recipe, but it came from Kerrisdale Design Inc.

Peach Upside Down Cake

3 ounces brown sugar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 peaches, peeled and cut into 1/2″ slices
6 ounces unsalted butter
3.5 ounces brown sugar
3.5 ounces white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 eggs
6.5 ounces all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 ounce baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
7.5 ounces buttermilk

Heat the oven to 350 F and spray an 8-inch cake pan with non-stick spray. In the microwave or in a small pot on the stove, melt together the butter with brown sugar, mixing well. Pour the butter mixture into the prepared pan and layer the sliced peaches on top. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, cream the butter and sugars until well combined. Add the vanilla and eggs, one at a time, mixing well between additions. In a separate bowl sift the flour, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt. Add the dry ingredients, alternating with the buttermilk, starting and finishing with the flour. Pour the batter over the peaches and spread to the edges of the pan.

Bake for 40 to 50 minutes, or until the center of the cake springs back when lightly pressed and the edges begin to pull away from the sides of the pan. Cool for 10 minutes in the pan then turn out onto your serving platter. Allow to cool for an additional 30 minutes before slicing.

Baking, Dinner

Peach, Prosciutto, Rosemary and Goat Cheese Flatbread

September 18, 2010 13 Comments

I bought a few peaches from the farmer’s market a few weeks ago, thinking they would be a great and simple addition to bagged lunches for work. And when they were perfectly ripe, they were fantastic. Sweet and juicy and just oh-so-peachy tasting. Then I got home from work one night and just wanted a salad. But, you know, not just a salad. And then a brainwave: what if I took the final sweet peach and combined it with some goat cheese, prosciutto and pecans.

Good god, that was a fine salad. Dressed in a light vinaigrette made with blood orange vinegar. I ate it with a few pieces of crusty baguette and it was a fantastic dinner.

It should come as no surprise that I made it again a week later when I had another group of peaches ripe and at hand.

But later, I thought I would like to try combining the bread and the salad by creating a flatbread that used the peach-prosciutto-goat cheese combination. This time with a little rosemary added in.

Is it cheating if I used some pizza dough I bought at the local Italian market? I’m going to say no. I can make dough, but when you’re at the market anyway and they have perfectly risen balls of dough for a little more than a toonie, I figure there’s no harm in taking shortcuts once in a while.

Got home, stretched it out on a baking sheet covered in a thin layer of olive oil and then just topped it with slices of peach, chopped rosemary, some ragged pieces of torn prosciutto and blobs of goat cheese. Into the oven and baked until golden, which took probably only 10 to 15 minutes, and it was good to eat.

It was delicious, though next time I may omit the goat cheese which, frankly, felt a bit like gilding the lily.

So this is less a recipe as much as a suggestion but one worth trying.

Peach, Prosciutto, Rosemary and Goat Cheese Flatbread

ball of pizza dough or homemade focaccia/pizza dough, enough to cover a baking sheet
olive oil to lightly coat baking sheet – 1 to 2 tablespoons
one peach
5 slices prosciutto, torn or cut into smaller pieces
1 tablespoon rosemary, roughly chopped
2 – 3 ounces goat cheese, crumbled OPTIONAL

Set oven to 500F. Stretch out dough on lightly oiled baking sheet. Top with sliced peaches, prosciutto, rosemary and goat cheese.

Bake until dough is golden, about 10 to 15 minutes.

Peach-blueberry muffins

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Fruit Cobbler Cake

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Peach Upside Down Cake

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Peach, Prosciutto, Rosemary and Goat Cheese Flatbread

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