First we have an upside down cake I made for July 4th, followed by some rich Milo brownies.
For the Fourth of July, I wanted to make something that said summer to me. I remembered to a few years ago when I made an incredibly messy layered pound cake with peach filling. It was delicious but not quite right for this event. Besides the peaches I found at Super J were just about the sorriest stone fruit I've ever met. The whole ordeal made me really want some ripe, warm, perfect Hill Country peaches out of a paper bag. That'll have to wait a week, though. Nevertheless, people enjoyed the cake, especially fellow PCV Ann! This post is dedicated to her.
The spiced peach filling for the upside down cake can work as preserves on its own. You can put it in a sterilized jar for long shelf life, or put it in clean tupperware in the fridge to keep for a week or so.
Super Spiced Peach Upside Down Cake
Cake
3 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
6 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 cup milk
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp sugar
1-2 peaches, sliced into eighths
lemon juice
Preheat oven to 375F.
Sift flour with sugar, baking powder, and salt. Stir butter to soften, then mix it with dry ingredients. Add milk and vanilla. Mix until all flour is dampened.
Beat batter 2 minutes medium/300 strokes by hand. Add eggs, beat 1 minute/150 strokes more.
In one greased 8" round pan, pour a little more than 1/2 of the batter.
Heat 2 Tbsp butter and 2 Tbsp sugar in sauce pan until bubbly, pour into second greased 8" round pan. Arrange peach slices on top of this mix, sprinkle with lemon juice. Pour the rest of the cake batter on top.
Bake for 35 minutes, you know the regular cake/toothpick stuff. Let them cool, take a lime.
Spiced Peach Filling
3-5 peaches
1-2 packets of gelatin
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water (maybe a little more)
1-2 dried cloves
1 tsp cinnamon or 1 medium stick
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
orange peel
dash (or two) cayenne pepper
1 Tbsp lemon juice
To skin the peaches, dunk them in boiling water for 30-60 seconds. Let them cool a bit, and the peel should come off pretty easily. Dice them into 1/2" chunks.
Place diced peaches in a saucepan, sprinkle with gelatin, stir over low heat. Add sugar and water. If you have cheese cloth or something like that, tie the clove, orange peel and cinnamon stick in it, and put it in the saucepan. If not, be prepared to fish those out. Add ground cinnamon (if using that), nutmeg, and cayenne. Stir. Let this cook down some, about 15-20 minutes.
Remove from heat, remove clove, cinnamon stick, and orange peel. Add lemon juice, stir. Let cool completely.
COMBINE FORCES!
This works best if the cakes have had plenty of time to rest--I refrigerated mine almost immediately after they came out of the oven, but that made them denser than I would have liked. But chilling or freezing them before assembly is a good idea.
Get your plain cake upside down onto the serving dish. If your pan is greased well enough and the cake has rested and chilled, just pick it out upside down. Spread your filling on top of that, then take your peach upside down cake, turn it upside down, and put it on top. How lovely.
Milo Brownies
Oh my you're missing out if you've never had Milo!
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/3 cup Milo powder
1/4 cup flour
pinch salt
Grease medium sized pan, preheat oven to 350F.
Cream butter and sugar, add eggs and vanilla, beat to combine well. In a separate bowl mix cocoa powder, Milo, flour, and salt. Slowly fold in dry ingredients to the wet. Mmm, doesn't that smell good?
Pour into your greased medium sized pan, bake 30-35 minutes, brownie/toothpick fun. I ended up having to leave it in for about 43 minutes, because my dish is deeper than I would like.
Let it cool! Oooh it smells good but let it cool. In fact, after you have some warm gooey brownie goodness, put it in the fridge, and it'll be even better the next day. Milo has vitamins and stuff, so you can pretend it's a good breakfast if you ignore all the sugar and butter in there!
Caribbean islands have staggered Carnival seasons, while Trinidad is the only one with the correct time (just before Lent). This is so that no one loses out on tourists.
