Coming to the end of peach season, we got a batch of peaches that were not that great. Sugared, they languished in the fridge. Rob will tell you that I go to great lengths to use up ingredients, even if it means going out to buy more ingredients.
This time, I decided to cake the peaches and be done with it. The biggest challenge was how to deal with soggy peach slices and the decision to shore up the fruit content with frozen blueberries, which would also melt and add more blue liquid to the mess on the bottom of the cake.
When a juicy fruit of any kind is used on the bottom of a coffee cake, the problem is that the batter 'boils' in the fruit juice and becomes soggy. This is not so offensive if eaten while warm, but I dislike the texture once cooled. If the cake is left out a few days, then mold grows more quickly in this medium as well. Yuck. One must note that I am not talking about a fruit crisp here, where the extra liquid is welcome.
Cornstarch to the rescue! I simply added a tablespoon to the batter, mixing it in with the dry ingredients, and this did a wonderful job of sopping up the extra juices and producing a cake with a good texture next to the fruit.
If there is no cornstarch on hand, then some pastry flour mixed with the all purpose flour component is acceptable, but this is more complicated since one needs to account for the fact that cake flour and all purpose flour is not substituted at a 1:1 ratio. Admittedly, I just eyeball it. Sometimes, if I wish to alter the texture of a cake, I will mix all purpose and pastry flours, but this is a discussion best left for a different post, since I am very fervent about it.
On another topic, my kids wanted chocolate chip cookies, but my daughter was feeling orange. I bought her a large orange, and she zested it and added it to her cookie dough. Such a simple addition, but what a difference it made to the ordinary Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe (although she argues that she produces cookies which are far from ordinary).
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