"Out of Office," Part 3: Peach and Blueberry Upside-Down Cake

I'm coming home today! So hopefully there will be more baking and blogging to be done in the near future, not to mention food travelogues to post! But for now, here's the last of the 4th of July baking, as well as the last of the getting-rid-of-sour-cream series!!

This sticky-gooey, colorful beauty is from the book Cake Keeper Cakes by Lauren Chattman. This book has been on my radar ever since Food Librarian had a giveaway for this cookbook about it and posted a delicious-looking orange ricotta pound cake from the book during National Library Week in April. I borrowed it from the library, flipped through it, and within 5 minutes I knew I need to buy this cookbook. It's chock-full of recipes right up my alley: snack cakes, bundt cakes, coffee cakes, tea loaves, etc.

The original recipe called for plums, but I had a bunch of white peaches in the fridge and the peach-blueberry combo is always a winner! Not to mention that peaches and ginger (which is in the syrup) are made for each other too! The cake was moist, flavorful, and went very well with the fruit, which was caramelized, gingery, and intensely juicy. Every time someone opened the container to peek, a delicious waft of peach scent would escape to taunt us.

By the time we got to the cake at the cookout, though, everyone was too stuffed to eat much of it, so I brought home most of the cake and brought half of it to work on Tuesday. It was all gone very quickly. I love how simple and rustic, yet flashy and awe-inspiring this cake is at the same time!




Peach Blueberry Upside-Down Cake (adapted from Cake Keeper Cakes by Lauren Chattman)

Ingredients:
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 cup blueberries, washed and any stems removed
3 peaches (or 5 medium-sized plums), washed, pitted and halved, and cut into 1/2 inch thick slices

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup pecans
1 & 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
Pinch nutmeg
1 cup sour cream
2 large eggs
1 & 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
5 tablespoons unsalted butter

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a non-stick 9-inch round cake pan (2 inch high if you have it, but 1.5 inch will do--make sure to have a cookie sheet under it when baking as it will ooze a little).

For the topping: Heat the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat until bubbly and foaming. Add the brown sugar, ginger, peaches (or plums), and blueberries, and cook, stirring often, until sugar is dissolved and fruit is softened, about 5 minutes. Take pan off heat, remove peaches from pan into another bowl and let peaches cool down.

Once the peaches are cooled, arrange the slices in the baking pan, fanning them out in a nice pattern. Heat up the syrup again to boiling, and reduce on the stove without stirring for approx. 3 minutes before pouring over the arranged peaches.

In a food processor of some sorts, grind up the pecans and 1/4 cup of the sugar until a very fine texture. Pour into a bowl and to the ground pecans, add/sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg. In a separate bowl, whisk together the sour cream, eggs, and vanilla lightly.

Using an electric mixer, cream together the butter and remaining 3/4 cup sugar on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the bowl and restart the mixer on low speed, adding in the sour cream mixtures slowly. Scrape down bowl again and add the dry ingredients 1/2 cup at a time, mixing in at low speed. After last addition of dry ingredients, mix batter for 30 seconds on medium speed.

Drop the batter gently over the surface of the fruit in the pan, using a spatula to smooth the batter evenly. As you can see at right, the batter and fruit pretty much fills up a 9-inch pan that is 1.5 inches tall.

Place pan on a silpat/parchment/foil lined baking sheet and bake in oven for 40-45 minutes at 350 degrees, or until toothpick inserted into center of cake comes out clean.

Transfer cake to a wire rack to cool. You must overturn the cake while the cake is still hot, however, so after 5 minutes, get your desired serving/storage plate. Poke the edge of the cake all the way around the circumference to loosen the cake from the pan. Flip the plate over onto the cake, and holding both sides firmly with oven mitts, flip the cake over. Set the plate and overturned pan down and shake gently to make sure the cake loosened from the pan. Lift pan. If necessary, replace any fruit stuck to the bottom of the pan. Let the cake cool for at least 20 minutes before serving. Serve at room temp or warm, and store at room temp in an airtight container for up to 2 days. Also stores well in the fridge and reheats well.