Peach Ricotta Cake

MADDIE DAY here, with a delicious cake to sweeten your end of summer.

Local peaches have been abundant this year, and I happened to have a container of ricotta cheese in my fridge. I hunted around for a recipe and adapted this one I found online.

Peach Ricotta Cake

Recipe adapted from Seasons & Suppers

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour, spooned and levelled

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Pinch salt

3 large eggs, at room temperature

2 cups white sugar

1 cup ricotta cheese, full-fat recommended

4 medium peaches, peeled or not, as you like

Brown sugar

Pinch salt

Confectioners' sugar, for dusting (optional)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350F with rack in the center of the oven. Grease a 9 or 10-inch springform pan and line the bottom with a round of parchment paper. Set aside. A 9-inch springform is the best option, if you have that size.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

Prepare the peaches by peeling, if desired, then cutting 3 of the peaches into cubes and then cut the 3rd peach into slices. Set aside.

In a large bowl with an electric mixer or the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the eggs with the white sugar until light in color and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the ricotta and mix in. Add the flour mixture and mix until combined.

Using a spatula, gently fold in the cubed peaches until combined well with the batter. 

Spoon the batter into prepared pan and smooth the top. Arrange the sliced peaches on the top of the batter. Sprinkle with a bit of brown sugar and and a pinch of salt.

Bake in preheated oven as follows: for a 9-inch springform pan, bake for 75-80 minutes. For a 10-inch springform, baking time will be shorter, about 60-65 minutes. In all cases, cake should have pulled away from the sides of the pan and the top should be evenly golden. You can test the center with a skewer to be sure it is cooked in the middle.

Allow cake to cool in the pan for 15 minutes, then run a knife around the outside and carefully remove the outside ring from the springform pan. Cool completely before removing from the pan base. Option: dust with powdered sugar (I omitted that step).

Enjoy with a cup of tea or coffee! It would also be good with a scoop of vanilla or peach ice cream.

Readers: what's your favorite way to eat peaches or other summer fruit?

🍑🎂🍑

Murder at Cape Costumers is out and available wherever book are sold!

My most recent releases are Scone Cold Dead, #13 in the Country Store Mysteries,

 Deadly Crush, 

and A Case for the Ladies.

Check out all my writing.

We hope you'll visit Maddie and her Agatha Award-winning alter ego Edith Maxwell on our web site, sign up for our monthly newsletter, visit us on social media, and check our all our books and short stories.

Maddie Day (aka Edith Maxwell) is a talented amateur chef and holds a PhD in Linguistics from Indiana University. An Agatha Award-winning and bestselling author, she is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America and also writes award-winning short crime fiction. She lives with her beau and sweet cat Martin north of Boston, where she’s currently working on her next mystery when she isn’t cooking up something delectable in the kitchen.

Peach Cake by Maya Corrigan #Recipe

This peach cake recipe is adapted from Marian Burros’s Plum Torte recipe, which appeared in the New York Times food section every September from 1983 to 1989. The Times was flooded with complaint letters after announcing the recipe would no longer appear annually. It is so popular it will never disappear. It's available online at the Times Cooking site, where it has more than 7,500 five-star ratings. Three years ago Leslie Budewitz shared her adaptation of it on this blog. 

I decided to call this adaptation a cake rather than a torte because it's closer to a coffee cake than to what I associate with the word torte. After living in Germany and Austria for four years, I’m used to tortes being layered, often flourless, cakes. Whatever you call it, this is truly one of the easiest and most adaptable recipes I’ve ever tried. You can make it with virtually any kind of fruit. I'll try it with apples the next time I make it. 

The basic cake recipe has only 5 ingredients, perfect for my sleuth's granddad in the Five-Ingredient Mystery series. He won't try any recipe that has more than five ingredients.

Ingredients

Basic Recipe

½ cup unsalted butter, softened
¾ cup sugar
1 cup self-rising flour, sifted
      (or all-purpose flour plus 1 tsp baking powder and pinch of salt)
2 eggs
4-6 pitted and sliced peaches, enough to cover the top of the batter in a single layer

Optional additions on top
Up to 1 tsp sugar if fruit is tart
Up to 1 tsp lemon juice if fruit is very sweet
1/2-1 tsp cinnamon
Blueberries or other fruit for color variety

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Cream together the sugar and butter in a large bowl.
Add the flour and eggs and beat the mixture.

Spoon the batter into a 9-inch nonstick springform pan (or 8 or 10-inch pan). If your pan isn’t nonstick, grease and flour it. You can also make this in a 9-inch round or square cake pan.

Arrange the peach slices on top of the batter in a single layer. If desired, sprinkle with optional toppings. I sprinkled on regular sugar and some sugar and blueberries. 

Bake for 1 hour. Let the cake cool. Remove the sides of the spring form pan before serving. Sift confectioners sugar over the cake if desired.

Serves 8.

Enjoy! The first time I served this to company, everyone who ate it demanded the recipe, so be prepared to pass it along if you give your friends a taste of it. 

The next time I make this cake, I'll try it with apples and maybe a few cranberries, if they're in season. Most of us are used to fruit pies, but fruit with cake is also yummy.

What kind of fruit would you enjoy baked in a cake?  

Maya Corrigan writes the Five-Ingredient Mysteries featuring café manger Val and her live-wire grandfather solving murders in a Chesapeake Bay town. Maya lives in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. Before writing crime fiction, she taught American literature, writing, and detective fiction at Northern Virginia Community College and Georgetown University. When not reading and writing, she enjoys theater, travel, trivia, cooking, and crosswords.

Visit her website to sign up for her newsletter. One subscriber wins a book each time a newsletter goes out. Check out the easy recipes, mystery history and trivia, and a free culinary mystery story on the website.

Book Birthday Peach Cake from @MaddieDayAuthor #giveaway

MADDIE DAY here, still flying from the release of No Grater Crime on Tuesday!

I like to celebrate things like releases, especially when it's my twenty-fifth book birthday. And don't birthdays deserve cakes?

Between my alter ego and me, we've had a lot of celebrations in nine years. (NOTE: the following graphic includes two books not yet released and one volume in which I have a novella, for those sharp-eyed readers who are counting!)

Not all the parties included cake, but some did. We had a wonderful cake for Delivering the Truth, which kicked off the Quaker Midwife Mysteries - and so far, it's been my only cake with a cover made of icing.

I made a carrot cake (of course) to fete five books in the Local Foods Mysteries.

I baked a cake when Murder at the Taffy Shop - my twentieth mystery - released a year and a half ago, and I decorated it with twenty of those little covers.

It kind of looks like another carrot cake, but frankly I don' remember. I guess I was too busy writing five books in a year and a half...

Anyway, now we have a new book and a new cake recipe! 

I'm in New England and am a devoted consumer of local produce. Peach season is short and we're right in the middle of it. I love this easy peach cake, with one pan and no icing involved! Who knows, maybe Robbie Jordan will serve it in Pans 'N Pancakes next time the Indiana peach season rolls around. 

Peach Cake

This cake is moist and crumbly and will make you want to invite all your friends for tea - or a celebratory glass of bubbly!

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups unbleached white flour

1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 sticks butter, softened

1 cup granulated sugar

3 eggs

1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 ripe (about 1 pound) medium peaches, pitted, peeled, and sliced into cubes, about 2 1/4 cups chopped peaches. If peaches are hard to peel, blanch by in boiling hot water for no more than 1 minute.

Powdered sugar for dusting

Directions

Heat oven to 350˚F. Grease a 9-inch springform pan with butter or cooking spray.

In a small bowl, whisk together 1 1/2 cups flour, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, and 1/4 tsp salt.

In a large bowl, beat together 1 1/2 sticks butter with 1 cup sugar on med/high speed until fluffy (4-5 minutes).

Beat in 3 eggs, 1 at a time. Continue mixing another minute on med/high speed. Once mixture is well blended, beat in 1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon zest and 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract.

Set mixer to low and beat in flour mixture just until blended.

Use a spatula to gently fold in the peaches just until evenly dispersed. 

Transfer batter to prepared springform pan.

Bake in the center of the oven at 350˚F for 1 hour and 5 minutes. 

Remove from oven and let cool to room temp before sifting the top with powdered sugar. 

Before serving, remove outer ring of pan and set base on a jar gripper on top of a larger plate or platter so it doesn't slide.

Doesn't that look yummy?

Enjoy!

Readers: What's your favorite birthday cake? I'll send one lucky commenter one of my special Author aprons!

My most recent release is Country Store Mystery #9. No Grater Crime came out on Tuesday! to some pretty rocking reviews.

"A beautiful ending makes this latest addition to the Country Store Mystery series as satisfying as one of Robbie’s breakfast specials!" - Jason, Goodreads reviewer

Murder at the Lobstah Shack is up for preorder and releases at the end of October!

We hope you'll visit Edith and Maddie on our web site, sign up for our monthly newsletter, visit us on social media, and check our all our books and short stories.

Maddie Day (aka Edith Maxwell) is a talented amateur chef and holds a PhD in Linguistics from Indiana University. An Agatha Award-winning and bestselling author, she is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America and also writes award-winning short crime fiction. She lives with her beau north of Boston, where she’s currently working on her next mystery when she isn’t cooking up something delectable in the kitchen.

A peachy cake and contest

Here's a  peachy idea and a comment contest from Victoria Abbott  (aka Mary Jane and Victoria Maffini)

A peachy little cake and a contest

We admit peaches are not in season here in this part of Canada yet.  None of our local fruit is.  We have to accept that. But for the Victoria Day weekend we had a little party outdoors with the grill and felt that a cake with some fruit would be just the ticket.  This little cake is a bit like a pound cake, a bit dense.  The lime syrup gives it some real zing.   

The peaches in our market seemed to be made of rock, so we used frozen peaches, just thawed, and blueberries.  Both times we made the cake (Mother’s Day and Victoria Day) it didn’t last long.  We look forward to trying it again in peach season.  It will be a regular at our table! 

You will need:

1½ cups all-purpose flour

1½ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

2/3 cup unsalted butter at room temperature

3 eggs at room temperature

3 tablespoons milk

Zest of two small limes

2 tsp vanilla

3 tbsp lime juice

3 tbsp icing sugar

3 peaches unpeeled, but sliced or 1 cup frozen peach slices and ½ cup fresh blueberries

Here's how to make it! 

 

Preheat the oven to 350 F

Butter an 8-in round pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.  

Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl.

Cream butter with ¾ cup sugar at medium speed. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in milk, lime zest and vanilla. Reduce speed to lowest and beat in flour mix until just blended. 

 

Transfer batter to pan and smooth top.

Bake in center of oven 30 – 35 minutes until a tester comes out clean. 

Boil the lime juice with 2 tablespoons of sugar until sugar is dissolved.  Cool slightly. 

Let cake rest for about 15 minutes and transfer to a rack (remove parchment first) Brush top with the lime syrup. It may not take the whole amount. 

Cool completely. 

Whip the cream with the icing sugar (and a bit of vanilla if you like) until you have soft peaks.

Just before serving slather cream on cake.  Top with peaches and blueberries. Or you could use strawberries - lots of options! 

 Help us celebrate!

Something else we think is just peachy is the approaching release of The Wolfe Widow, book three in our book collector series.





 
    Pre-order it here!




 We're celebrating with a draw for this Wolfe Widow mug.  All you have to do is leave a comment here!
 




Walter the Pug looks great on the cover. He's a dead ringer for Peachy, seen here in her tutu, dressed to kill for the launch of The Sayers Swindle.

 Come over and friend Victoria Abbott on Facebook

www.facebook.com/BookCollectorMysteries   www.facebook.com/maryjane.maffini
Tell  her  you love the pug!
www.twitter.com/AbbottMysteries
www.pinterest.com/jbinghamkelly
and check out Mary Jane Maffini and Victoria Abbott