Peach and Sour Cream Cake

This really is the perfect afternoon tea cake to eat with Chantilly Cream, and is also suitable as a luscious dessert served with Crème Diplomat. You could say I'm feeling peachy that I persevered and that after two baking sessions I baked this cake to my complete satisfaction. The cooking notes below will give you some explanation of what happened with the first attempt, but I was over the moon that this cake was absolutely delicious after I made a couple of changes to the original recipe. 

This is a recipe based on one by Alisha Henderson, and published in "The Baker's Book", edited by Ruby Goss, with photography by Rochelle Eagle and illustrations by Beci Orpin. It's published by Murdoch Books.

Here's the recipe. 

Ingredients:

200g salted butter, softened and diced

280g (1 1/4 cups) light brown sugar

300g (2 cups) self-raising flour

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsp ground cinnamon

3 eggs, lightly beaten

125 g (1/2 cup) sour cream

825g tinned sliced peaches, drained and roughly chopped

Method:

Preheat your oven to190 deg. C (170 deg. C fan forced).

Line the base of a 22 cm springform tin with baking paper and grease the ring.

Into a food processor, add the butter, 165g (3/4 cup of the brown sugar) the SR flour, bicarbonate of soda and half of the cinnamon (1 tsp).

Give the ingredients a good blitz, until well combined and crumbly in texture. You might need to give it a hurry up by turning the food processor off and using a rubber spatula to move the ingredients around just a bit. This depends on the size and power of your food processor. The bowl on mine isn't that big.

Add the eggs and sour cream, and mix for another 15 seconds, or until all the ingredients are well combined. It will be a nice smooth batter. 

Using a spoon, add the drained peaches, and gently stir to evenly distribute through the batter.

Another option is to scrape the batter into a medium sized bowl, and add the peaches to the bowl and gently mix them in. This is what I did, because my food processor is small, which makes it much easier, however I know it does use another bowl. This doesn't worry me too much, into the dishwasher it goes.

Spoon your batter into the cake tin and smooth the top. 

Now for the topping.

Measure out the remaining brown sugar and cinnamon, and mix together, and sprinkle over the top of your cake mix. If you wish to add a little more brown sugar, go for it, but it's not necessary.

Bake for a minimum of 45 minutes but allow a full hour. This is oven dependant. Mine took a full hour to bake. 

It's very important to test the cake with a skewer in a few places to ensure it is cooked. The skewer needs to come out clean.

Cool in the tin for 15 minutes, then remove and leave to cool completely on a wire rack.

To serve with cream:

Serve with whipped cream or Chantilly Cream, which is just cold whipped cream sweetened with icing sugar and vanilla extract, and is also a lovely French name. Sounds fancy though.  Chantilly cream is my preference. I used a small tub of Thickened Cream (or whipping cream), which is about 1 cup, 2 teaspoons of icing sugar, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract. I didn't want to make my Chantilly cream too sweet, so I only used 2 teaspoons of icing sugar, however you can use up to 1/2 cup of icing sugar depending on how you are using it, what you are serving it with and your personal taste. By the way, low fat cream won't whip, and the whipping cream  needs to be cold.

1 cup of cream (250 ml) equals two cups of whipped (500 ml)

Peach and Sour Cream Cake for afternoon tea for my Mahjong friends

Cook's notes:

• Please don't be tempted to reduce the size of your baking tin.  You need at least a 22 cm cake tin. The original recipe was for a 20 cm cake tin which I didn't have so I used a 19 cm tin, first time round. What's in a centimetre I thought.  The cake rose too high and the cake didn't cook right through. Very disappointing. 20cm would have been too small. So if you don't have a 22 cm tin, I think a 23 cm tin would also work. It is a large cake.
• When a cake has a streusel topping or a brown sugar topping, it can be difficult to tell whether it is cooked or not at the end of the cooking time. The usual signs of cracks in the surface and the cake pulling away from the side of the cake tin aren't as obvious. It is so important that even when you think it is cooked to use a metal skewer and insert it a few times to the bottom of the cake. If it comes out clean it will be cooked. 
• Ensure the peaches are very well drained.
• I baked this cake twice, the day before I was serving it to my Mahjong friends for afternoon tea. The weather has warmed up slightly here, so I refrigerated the successful cake so it wouldn't be too moist (sorry). It was perfect.

Crème Diplomat is another very celebratory cream option to serve with this cake, which was provided by Alisha Henderson. This takes the cake up to dessert status and would be delicious. However, it is an extravagant recipe, using 7 eggs. Save this one for a special occasion my friends, I am. I'm happy to confess that I haven't made this Crème yet, but it looks great in the photo, and I want to know I can find the recipe easily in the future, if I decide to make it. I know how recipes can disappear. After all, this is a very rich French patissiere custard (pastry cream) recipe mixed with whipped cream, using similar techniques to an egg custard from scratch.

Crème Diplomat ingredients:

48g cornflour

115g caster sugar

135g egg yolk (from about 7 eggs)

Seeds of 1 vanilla pod, split and scraped, or 1 tbsp vanilla bean paste

Pinch of salt

550ml of milk

30g unsalted butter

350ml whipping cream

Method:

Mix cornflour, sugar, egg yolks, vanilla seeds and salt in a large mixing bowl.

Heat up the milk in a medium saucepan over a low heat until it begins to scald. This is done when you see small bubbles and steam rising from the surface of the milk. Remove the saucepan from the heat,  and while whisking the eggs constantly, pour the milk over the egg mixture to temper it. 

Pour the milk and egg mixture in the bowl back into the saucepan, and place over a medium to low heat. Whisk constantly for about 5 minutes, until it bubbles and thickens, and looks as if it could stick to the bottom, but please don't let it. 

Be careful not to overcook the mixture or it will scramble. If you have a thermometer handy, use it and the custard is ready when it reaches 82 deg C.

Strain the custard through a sieve. 

Stir in your butter until it is combined with the custard. Cover the custard with biodegradable plastic wrap, letting the wrap directly touch the surface, and refrigerate overnight or for at least 2 hours.

Before serving, whip the 350ml of cream with either a hand held mixer, or a stand mixer and it's whisk, until medium stiff peaks form.

Now it's time to fold the whipped cream into the custard mixture. Your beautiful Crème Diplomat is now ready for serving in an attractive bowl with your cake, tart or whatever you wish.

Warm wishes,

Pauline