Before the summer is truly over, I wanted to make a dessert that celebrated some of my favorite fruits of the season. My mom had recently tried the Peach Upside-Down Cake from NYT Cooking, which was good, but I wanted something with more fruit, that paired the peaches with almond to make a more complexly flavored cake. To do this, the RATIOS of the ingredients were crucial and I relied heavily on knowledge from sources across the internet. Almond flour is not the same as wheat flour and combined with almond paste it can really weigh the cake down. I needed enough egg whites (instead of whole eggs) to provide lift. I also wanted to use buttermilk for lift and moisture, but I had to compensate for the added acidity by replacing some of the baking powder with baking soda. Overall, I was very pleased with the result!
Peach Blueberry Upside-Down Cake
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- 3 large ripe peaches, ½ inch thick slices
- ½ cup packed brown sugar
- ¼ cup water
- 2 Tbsp bourbon
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- ½ cup almond flour
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp baking soda
- ¼ tsp cinnamon
- ¼ tsp salt
- ¾ cup white sugar
- 2.5 oz almond paste
- 4 oz unsalted butter, softened
- 4 egg whites
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ tsp almond extract
- 1 cup blueberries
- ½ cup buttermilk
- Preheat the oven to 350ºF
- Butter an 8-inch cake pan, line the bottom with a circle of parchment paper and butter that too
Arrange the peach slices in a pattern to completely cover the bottom
- In a small saucepan combine the brown sugar and water and boil over medium-high heat for 6 minutes or until thickened but not burnt
- Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the bourbon, then pour over the peaches
- In a medium bowl, sift the flours, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt
- In a large bowl, beat the almond paste and white sugar until the almond paste is well broken up – you may find using your hands helps with this
- Beat in the softened butter to lighten, 2 min
- Beat in eggs one at a time then add extracts
Toss blueberries with 1 Tbsp of flour mixture and set aside
- Into the egg mixture fold 1/3 of flour mixture, then ½ buttermilk, 1/3 flour, ½ buttermilk, finishing with 1/3 flour mix
- Carefully fold in blueberries then spread batter over peaches in the pan
- Bake 55-60 min until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean (you may need to cover the pan with foil if the top is looking too dark)
- After cooling for 20 min in the pan, invert the cake onto a serving stand
Rating:
4/5 stars.
I thought this cake was a great effort and it was very well received by my coworkers. I was pretty successful with my ratio adjustments, creating a cake that had a nice texture and good flavor. The one textural thing I would change for next time is that it didn’t completely hold up the structure, seeming to collapse right above the peaches. This is either a problem with too much air in the batter, or possibly a result of too much moisture at bottom. In other improvements, despite coating in flour, the blueberries still sank to the bottom of the cake, so I might try just distributing them on top next time so they have farther to fall. Also, the caramel was very dark, which masked the beauty of the peaches, so I would probably use white sugar next time.
Yummy!
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