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This poundcake is peachy, three times over

Recipe: Turn on the oven for this creation -- it's worth it

Sacramento Digs Gardening
BY Kathy Morrison PUBLISHED JUL 12, 2020

Peach halves — Fresh peaches lend their color and flavor to poundcake. (Photos: Kathy Morrison)

Slice of peach poundcake — This might be the moistest poundcake ever.

I love yellow peaches, especially ones so perfectly ripe and juicy that you have to eat them standing over the sink.

But I'm not averse to baking with them as well, and I'm always on the hunt for a new recipe.

The poundcake recipe here is quite new, a big hit on the New York Times Cooking website apparently. Since it uses peaches three ways -- triple delicious! -- I had to give it a try.

The preparation of the peaches is the only complicated part, and it's all up front. Once they're ready, the ingredients are stirred together and popped into the oven. The cake bakes at just 325 degrees, but during this heat wave it might be better to make it in the later evening or early morning anyway.

This recipe also appears adaptable to other stone fruits, include nectarines, apricots, sweet cherries and mangos.

Choosing the reddest peaches or nectarines will give you a gorgeous color cake and glaze. White peaches or nectarines are almost too sweet for this, I think. I've cut back the original recipe's amount of sugar, but there is still quite a bit of butter and eggs in there, creating a big, rich cake. However, a treat's a treat, especially in peach season.

Triple Peach Poundcake

Adapted from Jerrelle Guy's recipe in the New York Times

Serves 8-10

Ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted and then cooled to room temperature, plus butter for the pan

2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting the pan

3 or 4 ripe yellow peaches, washed and defuzzed, if necessary, but unpeeled

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

3 large eggs plus 1 egg yolk, lightly beaten

1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup confectioners' sugar, plus more as needed

1 cup granulated sugar

2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon bourbon, 1/2 teaspoon rum extract or 1 tablespoon fresh orange juice, optional

Cake batter in pan — This is a lot of batter, but it'll stay in a 9-by-5-inch pan. For

smaller pans, use two or bake the extra batter in a muffin tin.

Optional garnishes:

Remaining peach glaze (see recipe)

Peach slices

Lightly sweetened whipped cream

Instructions :

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Butter and flour a 9-by-5-inch loaf pan. (An angel-food cake pan or two smaller loaf pans also can be used -- this makes a lot of batter.)

Pit and dice the one firmest peach into pieces about 1/3 inch in size. (Doesn't have to be exact.) Pat the pieces dry and set aside.

Pit and cut up the 2 or 3 remaining peaches (including skin) and place them in a food processor or blender along with the lemon juice. Puree. Pour out 1 cup of the mixture and put it in a mixing bowl along with the melted butter, eggs, egg yolk and vanilla extract. Stir these together and set aside.

To the remaining puree in the food processor or blender, add the 1 cup of confectioners' sugar and, if using, the bourbon, the rum extract or orange juice. (The flavoring helps mask the powdery-ness of the confectioners' sugar, but it's optional.) Blend it on high until the sugar is dissolved. Check the thickness: The glaze needs to be thick enough to stick to the cake but thin enough to drizzle. Add more confectioners' sugar as needed, and blend again. Cover and set aside until the cake is ready to be glazed.

Whisk together the flour, granulated sugar, baking powder and salt in a mixing bowl. Pour the peach/egg mixture into the dry ingredients and blend well. Fold in the diced peaches.

cake with glaze — Wax paper under the rack will catch the glaze drips.

Spread the batter evenly in the prepared loaf pan. Bake until golden brown on top and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 70-80 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool for 10 minutes before removing the cake from the pan to a wire rack.

To glaze the cake, slide a large piece of wax paper underneath the wire rack. Stir the glaze, and drizzle it over the entire top, letting some drip down the sides. Allow the cake to cool to room temperature. Slice and serve with a pool of extra glaze, fresh sliced peaches or lightly sweetened whipped cream, or just by itself.

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RECIPE

A recipe for preparing delicious meals from the bounty of the garden.

Keywords:

baking recipes fresh produce gardening Sacramento peaches backyard produce produce management

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Garden Checklist for week of May 12

Get your gardening chores and irrigation done early in the day before temperatures rise.

* Plant, plant, plant! It’s prime planting season in the Sacramento area. Time to set out those tomato transplants along with peppers and eggplants. Pinch off any flowers on new transplants to make them concentrate on establishing roots instead of setting premature fruit.

* Direct-seed melons, cucumbers, summer squash, corn, radishes, pumpkins and annual herbs such as basil.

* Harvest cabbage, lettuce, peas and green onions. This heat will cause leafy greens and onions to flower; pick them before they bolt.

* In the flower garden, direct-seed sunflowers, cosmos, salvia, zinnias, marigolds, celosia and asters.

* Plant dahlia tubers. Other perennials to set out include verbena, coreopsis, coneflower and astilbe.

* Transplant petunias, marigolds and perennial flowers such as astilbe, columbine, coneflowers, coreopsis, dahlias, rudbeckia and verbena.

* Keep an eye out for slugs, snails, earwigs and aphids that want to dine on tender new growth.

* Feed summer bloomers with a balanced fertilizer.

* For continued bloom, cut off spent flowers on roses as well as other flowering plants.

* Got fruit trees? If you haven't already done so, thin orchard fruit such as apples, peaches, pears, pluots and plums before they grow too heavy, breaking branches or even splitting the tree. Leave the largest fruit on the branch, culling the smaller ones, and allow for 5 to 6 inches (or a hand's worth) between each fruit.

* Thin grape bunches, again leaving about 6 inches between them. For the remaining bunches, prune off the "tail" end, about the bottom third of the bunch, so that the plant's energy is concentrated in the fruit closest to the branch.

* As spring-flowering shrubs finish blooming, give them a little pruning to shape them, removing old and dead wood. Lightly trim azaleas, fuchsias and marguerites for bushier plants.

* Add mulch to the garden to help keep that precious water from evaporating. Mulch also cuts down on weeds. But don’t let it mound around the stems or trunks of trees or shrubs. Leave about a 6-inch to 1-foot circle to avoid crown rot or other problems.

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