The Trials of a Very Ripe Peach

I work in a restaurant and we have a very sweet couple who comes in every Friday night. They have been doing so for years, and I have gotten to know them a fair amount. Apparently they have a peach tree in their yard and it was producing fruit like the dickens. They very kindly decided to bring me peaches since they had run out of ideas for them.

Me, being the glutton I am, devoured the first peach straight out of hand. Yummy, but rather acidic for my delicate system. I decided since low-acid is better for my angry tummy, I would cook the peaches.

The next night I came home from work at roughly nine o'clock at night and diddled around as usual. About ten thirty I realized I still had very ripe peaches that desperately needed to be cooked or thrown away. I was not about to waste such lovely fruits, so I scoured for a recipe that I would not need to buy anything for. I found a cake from my well-loved Baking with Julia that I had seen before, but had never been able to try. Fresh fruit does not usually last very long in our household and I do not often buy items to try out recipes for no special occasion. The original recipe calls for nectarines, but they say that almost any fruit can be used, even bananas, oddly enough. Peach Upside-down Chiffon Cake it became and away I went.

First off, the recipe calls for a ten inch springform pan three inches deep. Now I do not like springform pans aside from they are neat to play with clicking the ring on and off the base. They are fussy and often leak, so I do not keep them around. I can buy cake pans cheaper and they work just as well with proper greasing. This decided, I looked for a ten inch cake pan. And looked, and realized, I have no ten inch cake pan. Eight inch it is.

Apparently I wasn't paying too much attention to the ingredients either, because I was missing far more than I thought. The first crisis was the brown sugar, of which I had none. But brown sugar be damned! I had white sugar in spades. Surely the two could be swapped. I plodded on, artfully arranging the peaches and setting it aside to make the streusel. Once again brown sugar was needed, but I used white. Now here the recipe called for almonds and I could have sworn we had some. I was wrong. Not an almond in the house. No worries, I have oodles of pecans. Pecans and streusel are best friends. I was not fazed.

Streusel baking away, I turned my attention to the cake. Chiffon cake is fun to make and uses a lot of neat baking tricks. It is made with oil, which presented a problem I will go into shortly, instead of butter so the leavening is dependent upon baking powder, soda and whipped egg whites. You mix up egg yolks, oil and lemon juice into a thin liquidy goo. When the dry ingredients are added it thickens up and the acid activates the soda causing it to bubble and thicken. It was neat to watch and would be a great teaching tool for kids, but I digress.

A half of a cup is the lemon juice called for and I knew I had most of a lemon in the fridge and bottled lemon juice as backup. I do not know if you realize how much half of a cup truly is. It is a lot. Like, way more than I figured. I run out of lemon and run out of backup juice and am momentarily stumped before realizing, hey, is that lime juice? Limes are like lemons. Lime juice! It is mostly lemon juice so that is what matters, right?

The oil called for is safflower or vegetable oil, so basically a tasteless oil. When I went to the cabinet to get the oil, I realized too late that I only had olive oil. Granted, I had three bottles of olive oil, but who wants an olive peach cake. Italians make cakes with olive oil, so I thought what the hell and picked the least "olivey" of the oils. The most expensive of them won the battle for being the most subtle.

At this point I am a little nervous as to the integrity of the cake. I am moving along at a fair clip and go to pour in the batter eying my smaller than desired cake pan dubiously. I have a lot of batter. In fact, I have so much batter that I would doubt it would fit in the pan without the peaches or the streusel. It is a little too late to stop now and in goes the batter and streusel with the extra batter going into another cake pan.

Fortunately the cake does not rise as much as I feared and by some miracle manages to not overflow its pan. The problem is the cake is taking an age to cook and the top is browning and browning and burning. The surplus cake turns out beautifully. It is light, fluffy and tender with an odd olive aroma on the inhale, but the finish is lightly citrusy and lovely. It is improved by simple syrup made with some whiskey. Soak the cake and let it refrigerate and I am in love. Not overly sweet and fluffy as hell, it is divine. A little whipped cream slathered on the top with fresh raspberries and it could reach true elegance.

When the cake is finally done, it has to cool for a least twenty-five minutes before flipping it out of the pan. It is now about one a.m. and I decide I might as well spend the time taking a shower. The burned bits present a problem. Sure you will not be able to see them when the cake is flipped, stated by the boy, but I am worried you will taste them. I trim them off and they sort of peel off which is surprisingly satisfying. When the cake is flipped out, with no liquid sugar burns I am happy to report, it is glorious. I am proud of its appearance and even if it tastes like crap, I can still take pictures of its glory and fake it.

It does not taste like crap, quite the opposite. The cake is beyond moist, it approaches gooey status, but in a cooked, delightful way. The chiffon cake has a layer of the streusel in it and the peaches on top. I do wonder how it would have turned out with brown sugar, but I could not complain about the results. I plan on making this recipe again and when I do, look out produce section of my mega-mart, I am going to raid you.