Peach and Plum Cake is so good

Wow, I'm just over the moon with the cake I made today. I am not so over the moon with how much of it I know I'm going to eat. We're already at 3 pieces today in lieu of dinner. It's based on Nigel Slater's recipe for a "wonderfully moist fresh plum cake," but of course I didn't quite have all the ingredients so I made up my own version, "Rabbit's Summer Stonefruit Cake".

Where I differed, and I think in a good way, was that I had 12 teeny tiny yellow plums (you know, from wild plum trees in your neighborhood) and 3 ripe yellow peaches. I chopped the peaches into pieces about the size of a quartered normal-sized plum and I quartered the teeny tiny plums. I left the skin on everything. I used 100 g regular caster sugar and 50g light brown muscovado sugar (superfine white sugar and light brown sugar, respectively). Instead of walnuts, I used pecans (I'm from Texas, I had a pecan tree in my backyard. Walnuts will always be bitter and not sweet like a pecan to me). But I have to say, I think you could leave out the walnuts or pecans and the recipe would be fine. I would not leave out the ground almonds, those are vital (ground hazelnuts or ground pecans might be nice alternatives, if they exist).

Using a convection oven at 160 C, it took the full 45 minutes to cook. The top gets very brown and the peaches & plums caramelize in a very pretty way. Check out my photos for the yumminess. The skins also hold a tart bite which contrasts well with the sweet cake. All the fruit inside is just what I want in a summertime cake. But I must hold off and won't have my 4th piece of cake until breakfast time tomorrow.

Serving-wise, if you are generous, this makes 9 portions of cake. It would look lovely at a picnic or more casual do. It doesn't hold together quite well enough to be eaten by hand, though I'm sure any cake lover would be happy to deal with that issue. For me, it definitely makes me think "yum, this is the essence of summer".

And now for local food...

Sausage & egg rolls, yummo. See how in the far right of the above photo two people are eating them. Good choice.

Saturday found me wandering up north. I was heading to Abney Park cemetery (chock full of blackberries at the moment), but I hadn't eaten lunch. Wandering down Stoke Newington Church Street I happened into the weekly farmer's market. Voila lunch problem solved. Stocks Farm has a small stall selling your basic baps. I had a very tasty egg & sausage (3.5 quid), which is large and generous. Prices start at 3 quid for just one ingredient, bacon, sausage, etc. She'll cook your egg runny or hard, whichever you want.

While I'm sure I could get cheaper in Kentish Town, they use Stocks Farm ingredients, which makes this an organic, local bap and it's still less than you'll pay if you go into one of the local cafes. I really was over the moon with my bap that morning, something about the hp sauce, tomato sauce, egg, sausage patty and fluffy white roll was exactly what I wanted. There are tables set up or you can grab a seat in the shade along one of the benches surrounding the school yard where the farmer's market is held.

Service was a bit slow, considering there was only one person ahead of me and she was already cooking his order. But she's friendly, even offering to grind pepper onto your egg while it's cooking.

By the by, the Stoke Newington Farmer's Market is all local (within 100 miles of Hackney) and organic (I saw one stall selling bags of flour, they're in amongst the veggies). It's not a huge market, but people were definitely just hanging out there enjoying themselves, which is quite nice. It's a great place to go shopping or eating with your kids too, because there's a play area with things to climb.

And cheers to Healthserviceglasses who did remember to bring a camera when going to eat baps at the farmer's market.

Yellow peach time

Please keep eating yellow peaches and ignore the interloper, the white peach. I think the flavour from a yellow peach is just amazing, it is the flavour of summer for me. A white peach is just too sweet, with none of the tang that makes a peach special. I want the juices that run down my chin if I choose to not cut up my peach, forcing me to eat it standing over the kitchen sink.

Peaches are certainly not convenience food. I like mine peeled and juicy-ripe. I know a peach is ripe if I can peel it without using a knife. The skin just pulls away in strips, it only takes a minute or two to peel a peach. You wouldn't want to put a peach in a lunch-box, it couldn't hold up to the banging. You also can't buy just any old peach, nope, you need to find a green-grocer who knows what temperature peaches should be stored at. If you ever get a mealy peach, that oh so awful mushy, mealy texture. Don't blame the peach, point the finger at improper storage temperatures. Or so I was told by my farmer, and he knew a lot more about these things than me.

Sure, white peaches unpeeled have a similar flavour to a peeled yellow peach, but it's still too mild, not tangy enough. I worry that everyone will forget the wonderfulness of the yellow peach, because yellow peaches have to be juicy ripe before they are worth eating, where you can eat an underripe white peach. But why would you want to?

So it's summertime now, head out to your local farmers market. Smell the peaches, they smell like a peach when they are ripe. Quite likely, you'll have to bring the peaches home and put them on the counter for a day or two so they fully ripen. Smell them daily, they'll start to get a bit softer, there will be a little give. A bruise or two might show itself, that's ok, just cut it off after you've peeled the peach. Then bite into little pieces of summery heaven. Yum!

Thanks to Priscilla1295 from Flickr for the great photo of the peaches.