Week 14: Hungarian Peach Cake

Peaches. By golly, we got PEACHES.

The farm said to "fill your bag" with pick-your-own peaches, and Caboodle and I took the instructions to heart ... until the bag became kind of hard to lift.

We lugged home 20 pounds of peaches, or about 60 individual pieces of fruit. At least half wound up being sliced and frozen -- they'll brighten up some miserable day this winter -- but we had plenty of peaches to share with friends and to nosh on all week. And with that many peaches around, I didn't feel too bad about sacrificing a few to experimental baking.

Cobbler recipes seem to fall into two styles: those that have fruit under a biscuit or doughy topping (along the lines of these blueberry cobblers) and those in which the fruit cooks on top of a batter. We tried one browned-butter, peach-topped cobbler that was tasty, but unnecessarily rich. We preferred the peach-topped cake detailed below, which was cobbler-like, but lighter in texture.

Also in our CSA bag this week -- wedged under the 20 pounds of peaches -- were a couple of cucumbers, three yellow squash, green tomatoes, and a sugar pumpkin. The kids weren't crazy about roasted pumpkin, but they did like the roasted pumpkin seeds. The green tomatoes went into a Indian-style stew with yellow split peas -- filling, but not photogenic. A highlight of the week was a thin crust pizza topped with our heirloom tomatoes, grown on our CSA-provided tomato plants.

Hungarian Peach Cake
(Adapted from The Complete American-Jewish Cookbook by Anne London and Bertha Kahn Bishov (1971 edition). I cannot vouch for "Hungarian" origins of this recipe.)

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup sifted flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
4 to 5 peaches, sliced in half and pit removed
Sugar-cinnamon mixture for sprinkling (see note)

Sift flour with baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Set aside. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs individually and beat well. Add in flour mixture and mix well. Pour or spread the batter evenly into a well-greased pan (10.5 x 6.5 x 2 inches). Gently press the peach halves on top of the batter. Sprinkle with sugar-cinnamon mixture. Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.

Cut cake into pieces (around the peach halves) and serve warm. Makes 8 to 10 pieces.

Note: The original recipe calls for sprinkling the top of the cake with a mixture of 1/2 cup sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon. I mixed up the sugar and cinnamon as directed, but didn't use more than a couple of tablespoons of the mixture. The cake was plenty sweet.