Peach Cake

The cool breeze this morning had visions of apple cider and pumpkin pie dancing through my head, but with it also the sadness that comes with the closing of another summer season.  And while we may have a few more Indian Summer days, they will be fewer and further between as we transition into fall.

And so also comes the last of the peaches.  For me that is the true end of summer, since it is the sweet and juicy tang of a peach I look forward to all summer and when they finally appear at the farmers market, I diligently purchase a peck every Saturday.  Now the last of the summer fruit has a dwindling presence at the local stands as I keep looking for ways to enjoy and preserve this flavor of summer. So far I have canned, frozen, dried, muffined (yes I just turned muffin into a verb), french toasted, syurped and just straight up eaten the peaches, but I am starting to grow peach weary and decided it was okay to turn on the oven during the cooler evenings to bake a cake.

I remembered making a peach cake a few years ago that was delicious, however had no luck in finding the recipe, so of course I went right to Google...which lead me to the most wonderful peach cake I have ever made!  This cake is so wonderful that there is nothing I would change about the recipe. I am providing the link and not posting it here because it is not my recipe, but I am including my pictures.  This little cake is truly worth the time involved in each step, and while not difficult, does take a bit longer to make because of roasting the peaches prior to assembling the cake.  I found I did not need to add the Panko bread crumbs to the roasted peaches.  Follow every step, you will not be disappointed!

Perfect Peach Cake recipe from My Pantry Shelf

Fresh out of the oven, I went back for seconds...then thirds.

Then for breakfast again this morning because fruit in cake = breakfast cake!

French Macarons

While it feels like the spring is always a busy time... I forget how crazy things can be in the fall as well. That said I have been a total slacker with the blog and am now going to try and be better about posting, especially with the holidays coming up. And by holidays... I mean Halloween of course! I just got the cutest mini cookie cutters that are Halloween themed, must do something cool with them!

Fall craziness aside, I did take a week where I tried to master the French Macaron (this does not have coconut) and when I say "master" I mean try two batches before getting tired of spending all my money on sugar and egg whites. But really, I wanted to try this out because I wanted to be able to give a fabulous cookie to my friend who has a gluten allergy and these are gluten free cookies (they are made with almond flour, and no it is not available in the store, you have to grind them up yourself!). So while I am sharing pictures, just know that this is my first attempt, which actually went much better than my second (Martha's recipe was awful...gasp!).

I found the most success with the recipe from David Lebovitz's book The Sweet Life in Paris which is by the way an excellent read. The recipe was easy to follow, however I was only able to get one batch to come out of the oven successfully. I need to mess more with the temperature and the time. I did not follow the time exactly in the recipe, but I will post more about it when I can get it right. For now though, here are the pictures of my first attempt at Macrons. They truly are worth the effort. There is something about the crispy outside and the soft cream filling that is like no other cookie I have ever had!

David Lebovitz's French Chocolate Macaron Recipe

Raw Apple Cake with Salted Caramel Sauce

The fall is probably my favorite season of the year. The air is fresh and crisp and there are lots of different things to bake with. Plus it is cool enough to finally want to bake again after those hot summer months. I started off this cool weather snap with using some of the apples I picked up at the farmer's market. I used a recipe that my dad used to use when I was little to make the healthiest apple cake I have ever come across. The cake uses all whole wheat flour which is not often done because it normally will make a VERY dry cake. However with all of the apples, there is no way that this cake could ever be dry. I added the salted caramel sauce once the cake had cooled and it resulted in a great combination with the apples, almost like a camel apple in a cake!

Raw Apple Cake

1/4 c. brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 c. oil
1 tsp. vanilla
3 c. peeled and chopped apples (I tend to use more like 5 cups...I like lots of apples!)
1 3/4 c. whole wheat flour
1 tbs. ground flax seed
1 tbs. wheat bran
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Beat together the sugar and the eggs in a large mixing bowl. Beat in the oil and vanilla. Stir in the apples until covered. Mix the flour, flax seed, wheat bran, salt, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg in a separate bowl. Fold the dry ingredients into the apple mixture. Pour into an oiled and floured 9 inch square baking pan. You can also use two 8 inch round cake pans. I also just greased the pan and then lined the bottom of the pan with parchment.

If using a 9 inch pan, bake for 45 minutes. If using two round pans, bake for 35-40 minutes.

For the salted caramel sauce from Cara Lee Cupcakes and Cake, I used a recipe that I have posted before and it has yet to let me down!

I originally wanted to make this a two layer cake with a caramel filling, however it is probably too moist to do that. Plus I was out of cream to make the sauce and wanted to cut into the cake and it never looks good when a chunk is already cut out of the top layer!