#451

I was inspired by Olympic speed-skating tonight and decided to bake something out of my new cookbook, Rustic Fruit Desserts, courtesy of my thoughtful husband. I've had my eye on the Stone Fruit Tea Cake for some time, and had even bought a bag of frozen peaches last week to use. Since Romeo's parents are in town to see his induction into the medical honor society, Alpha Omega Alpha, tomorrow, I thought I'd try this cake out and pass it along if it was a success.

As I've learned many times in baking, simple = easy. This is a simple dessert, which is about pure tastes. You literally do nothing to the fruit - no sugar, lemon juice, spicing, nada. You start out by making a dough flavored with a tablespoon of vanilla. I knew this was going to be my kind of party, and I even broke out my heavenly vanilla bean paste. I found this recipe tricky, I think, because it was only the second voyage of my Kitchen Aid, and frankly, while I love it's motor and beauty, I find hand-mixers more appropriate for a "quick bread" like this.




Then you freeze the very wet dough - essentially the consistency of a muffin batter - for 30 minutes. The dough was wet - let me repeat - wet, so patting it into a tart pan was messy, but fulfilling in a kindergartner-meets-Play Doh sort of way.

(I'm not gonna lie. I have the world's ugliest kitchen counter tops. Literally, they're some sort of vinyl affixed to pressboard. And the design is a picture they took of marble. On some parts, the vinyl must have moved when they transferred the image, because the marble is all blurry.)

Add your fruit, dollop the top with remaining dough, sprinkle with sugar, and bake for 30ish minutes. Eh voila! A rather pretty, rustic dessert.



Except, my taking times were off because I forgot I had used frozen peaches. Despite the fact that I thawed them for an hour before starting and tossed them with a few teaspoons of flour to soak up excess juice, they were wet and slightly cold and so the cake wasn't fully baked when I took it out. I still sampled a piece, and then decided to throw it back in the oven for a few more minutes. Probably not something you should do, but as this was not a fancy, 4 layer cake, I figured, what the hey. Oh, and next time I'd put some tin foil on this bad boy at about the 20 minute mark as the top browns quite strongly.





And the taste? Wow. This was pure deliciosity. Kind of like a super vanilla sugar cookie meets salty muffin with peach in the middle. This is so absolutely a keeper. I might make this again next week. And the next week. And the next week. And the next...with frozen fruit, you can't go wrong. I can imagine this would be otherworldly with peaches AND blueberries.

ETA: Well, the whole put-in-the-oven-again thing did not pan out, so as tasty as the cake was, it is not suitable for sharing. I feel terrible when I have to throw things out, especially when they are almost there. But better than giving other people Salmonella poisoning. This is definitely a eat-the-day-it-is made cake, so it would be neat whipped up the night before and then popped in the oven an hour or so before guests arrive.