Crumble Redux: White Peach White Wine Minis!

Just shy of a week ago, we were in Vermont holding hands on Church Street and bracing ourselves against a downpour. Today, Nolan and I helped his dad finish a more secure pen for the chickens. It's been a week of catch-up: making sure there is enough time for the dogs, answering emails, scheduling magazine shoots, making frozen pizzas for dinner because we ran out of anything else in the fridge.

It's one of those slow-quick weeks, where the rug is pulled out from under my numb feet. Where I didn't realize I hit the snooze on my alarm until it was already 9 in the morning. The only thing I've wanted to do this week is sit and sleep and play with the puppies. Instead, it was 4 loads of laundry and making lists of things I wish I could do more of.

I called my mother and we talked for half an hour. It wasn't on the list, but it was time well spent.

I'm hoping for change, growth, understanding. I'd pray for it, if i were the praying type. Instead, I drink a cup of coffee and remind myself to breathe. That it's okay to have a week ebb and that if I stretch out my hands and arms and fingers enough, maybe I'll float along the current a little more peacefully than I am used to. Let's hope so. 

But one cool night, I had the windows open and the dishes done and peaches going to mush, so I recreated my other crumble to serve us for what we wanted: something spiked and small and comforting. Something to get us through this week and looking forward to the weekends ahead where we have a little more energy and a little more time and a little more to do with our day than sit and worry around the house.

White Peach and White Wine Mini Crumbles

With the high level of brown sugar and the butter added into the fruit portion, the fruit gets covered in a bubbling caramel that is too delicious to not want seconds.

Ingredients for filling:

• 5 white peaches, chopped
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 TB butter, melted
• 2 TB white wine
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 TB cornstarch

Ingredients for topping:

• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup quick cooking oats 
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup sliced almonds
• 6 TB unsalted butter, slightly softened

Recipe:

1. In a large bowl, mix together all ingredients for the filing
2. Allow to sit and macerate for 30 minutes
3. After 30 minutes has elapsed, grease 6 ramekins and preheat oven to 375*F
4. Spoon mixture into each prepared ramekin
5. Now, dump all topping ingredients into another bowl and, using clean hands, mix together
6. Continue mixing until all ingredients are fully incorporated and a crumbly dough forms
7. Pour directly on top of fruit and pat with down
8. Bake for 30 minutes or until top is browned and golden

First Day of Summer - Make this cake!

I can be lazy, but I am not lethargic.  

For me, summer always translated to liquid days. Days that dragged on. The sound of cicadas were the sound of sun rays. Moths hit the windowsill at night and I stayed up way too late. Summer is a melting feeling, I always felt stagnant and viscous in the heat. I spent my time reading. I spent my time sleeping. I spent too much time in hot cars with no air conditioning, waiting in parking lots for my mother to finish grocery shopping. I spent a lot of time alone in the summer months between 7th and 8th and 9th grades.

For me now, who I am at 25, it is different. I have the dogs, the chickens, a fiance. I have a life I fell into, but pursued all the same. I like summer now, in my little town of Ligonier. The rain comes and goes as it pleases and floods our side yard and still I walk barefoot with the dogs when we play in between the flowering trees. I'm not able to read as much, dishes and laundry and days get in the way; but I bake and I write and I am content in the fact that I am growing up. 

I found a shirt the other day that Nolan got me the first month we moved to California. A black Alexander Wang shirt that still smelled like the cigarettes I smoked in law school. It's no longer an anchor to that past life, but just a shirt I pulled out of the drawer now. I am realizing that we are allowed to change and not be constricted to the confines of a past we tried to idealize. That we are better now, better here, better today than we were yesterday.

I am realizing that I can enjoy summer because I am in this nebulous summertime feeling--at 25 I am no longer suffocating, but verdant and green and surrounding by the warmth I couldn't fully embrace before.

Peach Sheet Cake!

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 cup AP flour
• 2 TB cornstarch
• 2 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 TB vanilla extract
• 1 cup whole milk
• 1/3 cup mayonnaise 
• 1 TB white vinegar
• 2 peaches, sliced and pitted

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350*F. Line and grease a 14" x 16" cake pan
2. In a mixing bowl, sift together flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and salt
3. In another bowl, cream together butter, shortening and white sugar
4. Add eggs to the sugar mixture, one at a time, and stir until incorporated
5. In a measuring cup, whisk together vanilla, milk, vinegar, and mayo
6. Alternate between sugar mixture and milk mixture into your dry ingredients, stirring continuously until you get a soft, light batter
7. Line bottom of cake pan with peaches in any design you want
8. Gently pour and spread batter on top of peaches
9. Bake for 50 minutes or until browned and fluffy
10. Allow to cool for a few minutes, then invert onto a cooling rack to enjoy

Summer's Cake: Peach and Ricotta Gateau Breton

The nights are slightly colder. I’ve adapted to the thick blanket of humidity at night. Milo at my feet and the air conditioner running. I keep a robe on a bedside chair, in case I ever get too cold. I wouldn’t dream of turning the air down, though. There’s no ceiling fan in this room, the ceilings barely hit six feet. So I stretch on the bed and shudder. I grab for the puppy in the middle of the night, check to see if he is still breathing, put his head on a pillow next to mine. I dream of Heathrow airport and look up how to how to say “damselfly” in Spanish. I stayed awake until one in the morning, reading cookbooks and scribbling notes. And at three in the morning, I woke up to a moth hitting my window in a manic apache dance, leaving small floury dust on the mesh window screen. A Catherine, disheveled from her cocoon.  It’s the pubescent hour of stretching and yawning, the transition between yesterday and today and I loathe it now, the beginning of summer ending. Too fast it’s already blurry and I find myself beating my shoulder against every window, begging to be left in. The only trace of me is dust, powder, particulate and leftover.

So I baked a cake to celebrate the season. An elegy, a eulogy. A begging for forgiveness for taking it for granted, being home and safe and wrapped up in bed, waiting for the heat to break.

Peach and Ricotta Gateau Breton

Ingredients

• 1 ½ cup AP flour
• 2 TB cornstarch
• ¾ cup brown sugar
• pinch of salt
• ½ cup butter, softened
• 1/3 cup ricotta
• 6 egg yolks, plus 1 for egg wash
• 1 TB pure vanilla extract
• 1 TB orange juice
• 1 TB orange zest
• 1 large peach, slice

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375*F
2. Prepare an 8-inch springform pan with butter and parchment paper, set aside
3. In a bowl of a stand mixer, sift all dry ingredients together
4. Add butter and ricotta and beat on medium-low with the paddle attachment
5. With mixer running, add yolks, one at a time (do not add subsequent yolk until previous is completely incorporated)
6. Add vanilla and orange juice and zest
7. Turn mixer off, use a rubber spatula to hand fold a couple times to ensure all ingredients are fully incorporated
8. Arrange peach slices on your parchment-lined pan
9. Gently pour batter over peaches in pan
10. Batter is very sticky, so sprinkle a little flour onto the top (or with floured hands) to help press dough into pan and along the edges
11. Bake for 15 minutes at 375*F, then reduce oven to 350*F and bake for an additional 30 minutes or until golden brown on top
12. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely before removing from pan
13. Turn out onto a plate so peach-side is facing up
14. Serve cooled or warmed up a bit. Can keep for up to two days.

Peach and Cornmeal Cake: Inspired by the local flea market

I go to flea markets now and fill a spare closet with things I don’t need.  A blanket from the 1800’s, a cookie jar from Jerusalem. I get cash out of the ATM and buy a coffee to keep my hands idol while I’m walking around. I chat with my mom as she buys toys for her first grandchild, my unborn niece. She’ll be spoiled before she gets here, we joke.

They’re interesting places, flea markets. But, then again, everything has been interesting moving back, feeling like a stranger with a shared zip code. We mill through someone’s trash. I found a love letter to a woman named Ellen once. A lady wanted ten cents for it. Nothing is kept, most things are fingerprinted or cracked; and yet, still I come back. I bring others, I buy gifts.

It’s the promise that I can buy someone’s heritage, someone’s family history. That my own is easily supplemented with that of strangers. That, somehow by buying these jars and napkins and old, old butter knives, I can authenticate myself in this town of mine. At its heart, it’s imperialistic. At its heart, I am lonely here, a foreigner who moved back into his childhood home in February of this year.

 But I’ll stay in this house until the baby is born. Until she can wear the sweater I got her. Until she plays with the blocks my mother found in a cardboard box marked a quarter by a vendor’s red truck. They’ll spell out her initials – LGW, Lana Grace Williams. And I’ll keep making cakes in the meantime, from old cookbooks I found on card tables next to a pile of tangled costume jewelry. And I’ll make my own memories while I’m home. They may not be much, but they’re ours to keep.

Peach Cornmeal Cake

This cake is inspired by one such recipe I found in an old spiral-bound community cookbook. It's probably the simplest cake I have ever posted. Makes one 6-inch cake.

Ingredients:

• 1 ¼ cup AP flour
• ¾ cup fine-ground cornmeal
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ½ cup whole milk
• ½ cup crème fraiche
• 1 TB white vinegar
• 1 TB honey
• 1 TB pure vanilla extract
• 2 TB butter
• 2 TB shortening
• ½ cup sugar (I used the amazing Sweet Revenge Sugar for an aromatic and mellow flavor to the cake) for this recipe, but regular white would be fine
• 1 egg + 1 yolk
• 2 TB dark brown sugar
• 1 peach, sliced

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375*F
2. Prepare a 6-inch round cake pan with parchment paper and butter
3. Sift together AP flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt in a medium-sized bowl. Set aside
4. In a measuring cup, whisk together milk, crème fraiche, vinegar, honey and vanilla extract and set aside
5. In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream your fats with your sugar, scraping down the sides of the bowl once or twice with a rubber spatula
6. Add egg and yolk, mixture will look a little curdled
7. Alternate between the flour and your milk mixtures until a thick batter forms
8. Scrape again with your rubber spatula
9. At this point, sprinkle your brown sugar at the bottom of your prepared pan, right on top of the parchment
10. Arrange your peach slices any way you’d like
11. Gently pour batter over your peaches and smooth top. Tap the bottom of your cake pan gently on your counter a few times to settle any air in the batter
12. Bake for about 45-50 minutes, until golden brown and slightly puffed

This cake was made through a partnership with Sweet Revenge Sugar Co. All opinions are my own.

A Collaboration with Dulcet Creative

I was lucky enough to work with Dulcet Creative to make these fig galettes.  Head over to their blog to see the recipe!  Tomorrow, I'll have a follow-up recipe involving some of the leftover peach jam from these guys.