Afternoon tea and peach cake

So there was a huge flat of peaches in the house...what to do with them all? Well, it was early afternoon and I wanted a sweet but not-too-sweet dessert-like kind of snack. Then I thought, why not make a peach cake? It'd be just the thing, and it would be an excuse to try out a delicious-looking Stone Fruit Tea Cake recipe from Rustic Fruit Desserts (Ten Speed Press) featured recently in Gourmet magazine.

I chopped up 2 1/2 cups of peaches...


Then I mixed up the batter...

{Cream 3/4 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature, and 1 cup sugar. Then beat in 3 eggs, one at a time, followed by 1 Tbs. vanilla extract. Whisk together 2 1/4 cups flour, 1 tsp. baking powder, and 1 + 1/8 tsp. salt and mix the dry ingredients into the creamed mixture.}

....and spread half of it into a ceramic baking form...

...sprinkled the fruit over......dotted the top with the remaining batter...
...and baked at 375 F for 40 minutes. Halfway through baking, I sprinkled it with some turbinado sugar, for a little crunch on top.

{If your cake browns too quickly, place some aluminum foil loosely over the top while baking. Just make sure that your cake bakes long enough so that the bottom layer, which gets moistened by all the fruit juices, can cook through and get nice and fluffy.}

Delicious! It's like a cobbler, but it's a cake! Let it cool for 15 minutes, and then cut big wedges and serve! You'll love the crispy baked surface sprinkled with crunchy turbinado sugar, the fluffy cake beneath, and the soft sweet peaches dotted throughout the middle. I sure loved that afternoon snack.

Now, I wonder what I should do with the rest of those peaches ....maybe another one of these cakes?