Peach Buckle

Fresh baked peach buckle.

This recipe is my first foray into the world of Smitten Kitchen. I’m sure that many food bloggers already know about this bible of a food blog, but for those who haven’t seen it, I highly recommend the site. It is one of the only food blogs I read on a regular basis; the photography is great and the recipes are always fresh, in season and creative.

A few weeks ago, a Nectarine Brown Butter Buckle was posted, and I decided to actually try one of Deb’s recipes, rather than just ogle them online. Luck would have it that I ended up with some extremely ripe Ontario peaches just as I was invited to a dinner party. This smelled so divine baking today that I’m surprised Kevin was able to leave it alone long enough to get it to the dinner party!

I decided to leave out the brown butter part and change the nectarines to peaches. The comments online were that the taste wasn’t much different, and  I am supremely lazy when it come to baking. And cooking, really. I hate it when any recipe has many steps…..make this…set aside to cool…etc, etc. Usually I just skip the whole thing entirely.

Also, all I had was an 8 inch round cake pan, and the recipe called for 10 inch. I attempted to cut the ingredients down by about 1/3. So, here is my version of a buckle (also known as a tasty cake with fruit in the middle and streusel on top).

If you have a 10″ pan or prefer brown butter, I would suggest using the original recipe.

Peach pinwheel.

This version fits an 8″ cake pan.

Cake

1 stick butter (1/2 cup), melted
1 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp  salt
Pinch of cinnamon
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
4 medium peaches, sliced
1 tbsp lemon juice

Streusel

2 tbsp butter
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup all purpose flour
Pinch of cinnamon
Pinch of salt

On goes the streusel.

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Start with the cake batter: Melt the butter, mix in the rest of the wet ingredients. Add in dry ingredients and stir well. I used the same bowl for all of it. Less dishes, less steps = happy me.

2. Grease baking pan. Spread batter in the pan and top with sliced peaches. Make a pretty pattern in you like.

3. Mix together the streusel until it is crumbly, you can do it in the cake batter bowl to save dishes. Pour over the cake batter and peaches to cover. Some peaches and batter will still be visible.

4. Bake at 350F for 40 minutes. It will be done when the cake springs back when you poke it, and the cake isn’t jiggly when you shake it.

It was a hit at dinner, we served it with some vanilla ice cream and the tartness of the peaches, the mildness of the cake and the sweet of the ice cream were a great match.

I reduced the sugar a bit in my version, which was great when paired with ice cream. You might want a bit more sugar if you plan to serve alone. Also, I found the cake the tiniest bit dry, so perhaps a bit more milk in the recipe, or baking 35 minutes. However, I may just be being picky, because Kevin said the moistness of the peaches went well with the texture of the cake.