TWD: Summer Peach Upside-Downer

The house I grew up in had a wonderful backyard full of fruit trees, including two peach trees that produced pounds and pounds of peaches during the summer months. I took this for granted, in the way that children do, and didn't appreciate the blessing of having so much fresh, delicious, free fruit growing at my fingertips. If I thought about it at all, it would be to complain about having to pick up the rotting fruit from the ground--which truly is a horrible chore--or the long, sticky days of canning peach slices and making peach jam.



Now I am older. Wiser. A buyer of my own produce, and a pincher of my own pennies. And a green-eyed monster when I hear others casually talk about their fruit trees, or berry bushes, or tomato plants. Now that I buy all of my produce at the farmers market, I wish I could have my childhood over again--I would spent whole afternoons just devouring the peaches, or the plums, or the strawberries that were so available and so unappreciated. The market yields good fruit, yes--bless sunny southern California--but I can only buy so many $12 bags of fuzzy peaches before the food budget is shot. Sometimes at the end of a particularly expensive farmers market trip, I feel like Scarlett O'Hara. I stand by my car, clutch my bulging bags of overpriced tomatoes, and shake my fists towards the sky: "As God is my witness, I will one day grow my own fruits and vegetables!"



Alas, dramatic pronouncements have so far failed to get me any closer to having a yard of my own, so for this week's cake I again relied on farmer's market peaches, the same ones I used to make grilled peaches and poundcake. The original recipe was for cranberry upside-down cake, which looked--and sounded--delicious. But with temperatures still in the 80s, it feels much more like summer still than fall, and I wanted to spend a little more time with summer fruits before the fall pumpkin and apple-palooza.



The verdict: aaaaaalright. It was missing something--maybe the crunch of nuts, or a more robust flavor from cranberries. The peaches were nice, but once baked, they had the unmistakable texture of those summer-packed canned peaches of my childhood, and the mild, slightly spiced cake underneath just didn't bring enough flavor for me. I love the idea of the cranberry-upside down cake, so once it really starts to feel like fall around here, I'm going to try it again.