Peaches are a great fruit to bake upside down cakes with. In fact, most stone fruits are. The fruits are tender to begin with, so there is no need to precook the fruit or worry that it will be too firm after the cake is done baking. Peaches also have a beautiful golden color that they add to a cake, making the dessert look very summery and warm.
This is a simple upside down cake with a plain, vanilla cake base. It’s moist, tender and does a great job of soaking up excess juice from the peaches on the top of the cake. To make the cake, start out with some whole, fresh peaches. Cut the peaches into thin slices and arrange in a spiraling pattern on the bottom of a cake pan that is coated with butter and sugar. Make sure that the peaches are in a single layer so that the cake batter can effectively hold them in place. The batter-topped cake is baked like any other cake would be, then turned out to reveal the fruit when it comes out of the oven. The cake goes very well with whipped cream, as well as with vanilla and peach ice cream, both of which will bring out the vanilla and peach flavors of the cake.
The one final note I have about this cake is that it looks its best on the day that it is made. The peaches look their plumpest and their color is the most vibrant. After being stored overnight, the cake will looks a bit of its color and, while it will still look good, it just won’t look quite as good. If possible, make it the same day you intend to serve it, then enjoy the leftovers yourself the next day.
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Just like any other type of cookie or bar cookie, brownies are an incredibly versatile treat, even though their name usually brings to mind just one image of a rich, fudgy bar. The Brownie Lover’s Bible is dedicated to all kinds of different brownie recipes, all with different and equally mouthwatering photos of the recipes. It might even convert a few people to being brownie-lovers after flipping through the pages, before even making any of the recipes!
That said, it’s probably a good thing that the recipes are written in a clear and easy-to-follow way. They aren’t difficult to put together and the waiting time is mostly in the cooling of the finished products, not in difficult prep work. This means that it doesn’t take long before you’re eating the fruits (or chocolates) of your labors with this book. The book is broken down into sections based on different types of brownies, and includes everything from classic fudgy brownies, to gluten free brownies to brownie pie and ice cream-like frozen brownie hot chocolate. If you don’t make any of the recipes, you’ll still walk away with lots of ideas for new flavors and ingredients to add to some of your other favorite brownie recipes.
One of my favorite food memories from my trip to Paris a few months ago was going out late at night near the Eiffel Tower and queuing up with a bunch of other people to get freshly made crepes, then sitting in the park enjoying the lights of the tower while eating. The crepes were so good that the first night I had one, I ate it just after crossing the street away from the crepe stand, then turned back around and ordered another. They were that good. At home, I usually make crepes for breakfast and fill them with jam. The street crepes, while sweet options were available, were most popular in their savory incarnations. I liked the ham, cheese and egg crepes best.
I was glad that I had the opportunity to watch the crepes being made because the process was a little different than you might expect. I fully anticipated that the fillings would be added after the crepe was cooked. Instead, they were cooked right on the crepe itself – even the egg! A few practice runs and home with my own crepes, and I now I have a method that seems to come out almost as well as the crepes I had in France. The French crepes will always have the late-night Eiffel Tower advantage over mine, however.
To make these crepes, you need a large frying pan, preferably one that’s about 12-inches across. A crepe pan is not necessary unless you’re going into the crepe business. You could make smaller crepes, but you might have to compromise on how you fold it to get all the filling it. It’ll still taste good, however. I used deli sliced ham and havarti cheese for these. Turkey meat is good, too, if you’re not a fan of ham, even though the saltiness of the ham really goes well with the egg and cheese. Havarti and Swiss are my two favorite cheeses for these, but feel free to use your favorite sliced or shredded cheese. The amounts given below are just suggestions, as I tend to eyeball the amount of cheese I’m using. No matter how you tweak the filling, you’ll end up with a great-tasting crepe. The batter can me made in advance and will keep well in the fridge for about 2 days, as long as you give it a stir before using.
I don’t usually provide step-by-step photos for recipes, but in an effort to recapture even a hint of the experience of watching a pro make crepes, I’ve photographed all the steps to go along with this recipe.
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A springform pan is a type of cake pan that has removable sides. The strip of metal that makes up the sides of the pan is shaped into a ring and is held together with an adjustable latch or buckle. It can be tightened by snapping the latch into place, tightening the ring and creating a tight seal with the pan’s base. When unlatched, the ring expands and can easily be removed from the cake and/or the cake base.
A springform pan can be used in place or a regular cake pan in any recipe. When the ring is closed, they bake cakes (or other baked goods) in exactly the same way as a standard one-piece pan. The difference comes when you want to remove the cake that is inside the pan. With most pans, the cake must be inverted to remove it from the pan. This isn’t a good idea with all cakes, like delicate cheesecakes or cakes with toppings on them, such as streusel-heavy coffee cakes, because the cakes would never survive being flipped upside down out of a regular pan in one piece! With a springform, you can essentially remove the pan from the cake with great ease. Typically, cakes baked in springform pans are cooled right in the pan and the ring is removed before serving. The cake can be served directly on the pan’s base or carefully slid off onto a cake plate or othe serving platter.
I felt bad that I wasn’t impressed by the 150-lb cupcake that set the Guinness record for World’s Largest Cupcake. It may have been big for a cupcake, but it also didn’t look to be much bigger than some cakes I’ve seen (and smaller than others!). But the record has been broken with a cupcake that is a bit more impressive – nearly 10 times more impressive – than the original. GourmetGiftBaskets.com broke the record this past week with a 1,224-lb cupcake, unveiled in Detroit. The half-ton pastry was filled with a vanilla custard and was baked in a specially-designed pan, not make of smaller cakes stacked together. It was over 11-ft around and made with 200 lbs of flour, 200 lbs of sugar, 200 lbs of butter and 800 eggs (amongst other ingredients).
As impressive as this cupcake is, it’s worth noting that the company originally set out to bake a 7,000-lb cupcake. While live-blogging it’s progress on Twitter, that cupcake – also baking in a specially designed pan – “suffered catastrophic failure during the 40 hour baking process. Weight of cupcake rising crushed a major convection tube.” The project had to be scaled back at the last minute to meet their deadline and preserve the rest of their kitchen equipment.
