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

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF
2. Butter an 8-inch cake pan, line the bottom with a circle of parchment paper and butter that too
3. Arrange the peach slices in a pattern to completely cover the bottom
4. 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
5. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the bourbon, then pour over the peaches
6. In a medium bowl, sift the flours, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt
7. 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
8. Beat in the softened butter to lighten, 2 min
9. Beat in eggs one at a time then add extracts
10. Toss blueberries with 1 Tbsp of flour mixture and set aside
11. Into the egg mixture fold 1/3 of flour mixture, then ½ buttermilk, 1/3 flour, ½ buttermilk, finishing with 1/3 flour mix
12. Carefully fold in blueberries then spread batter over peaches in the pan
13. 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)
14. 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.