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Saturday 3 September 2011

Brown sugar,ginger and pecan cake with peaches.

I don't know about you but I don't really like fruit.On the other hand I love vegetables but I just never really liked eating fruit say,for a snack.I don't know if it's because maybe here in Ireland supermarkets don't stock really ripe,good quality fruit.The only way I usually eat fruit would be in desserts.Give me a fruit crumble,pie or tart anyday and I will most definitely go back for seconds.That's why it's unusual for me to choose a recipe like this where the fruit isn't actully used or cooked in the dessert but merely to adourn the cake itself.

I think what really persuaded me to make this cake was the images which accompanied the recipe.They were so striking and the colours of the cake were so pretty to look at.The peaches on the top of the cake were also arranged so beautifully that I felt I just had to recreate this cake for myself.My pictures and indeed my cake probably resemble nothing of the original but I was still very pleased with the results.This cake required no fancy piped icing,just simple sliced peaches.

Even though this cake turned out very well,while it was baking I was almost considering not posting about it.See I realised just as the cake went into the oven that I had made a rather huge mistake during the preparation of the cake.Not jus a minor omission of a teaspoon of vanilla extract.No,I had unbelievably doubled the amount of butter required for the cake.You may think that sounds like a very silly mistake to make but the ingredients list gave the butter measurement in cups and when I converted the cup measure to grams I forgot that the cake only required 1/2 a cup of butter!I was so dissapointed and had resigned myself that the cake was never going to work.However,I left it in the oven just to see what would happen and amazingly enough,the cake turned out fine even if it was a tiny bit sunken in the middle!The frosting covered up the slight dip in the cake nicely and no one was any the wiser.This cake required that you use fresh peaches.When I read this I almost decided to use tinned peaches instead as I was worried that I would have a hard time finding really tasty,ripe,juicy fresh peaches.In the end I decided to stick to the recipe and go with the fresh peaches.To be honest I can't really fault this cake.The cake itself was delicious,the extra butter actually added to its flavour and kept it unbelievably moist.The dark brown sugar really came through to give the cake a lovely deep sweetness.The bits of pecan added nicely to the texture.The unusal frosting was delicious and was perfect for the cake.The only slight downfall came where I expected.The peaches I got although not terribly hard,lacked that sweet peach flavour.If I was to make this cake again I would almost certainly use tinned peaches to ensure the peaches were really sweet.As a little extra thought,I also think this cake would work with a lot of other fruits for example,plums.

You can find the recipe here on a great blog called Dessert for Breakfast.The photos are particularly good!

6 comments:

  1. This cake looks beautiful. I am planning to make a pecan cake and heading to head check out the recipe.

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  2. Yeah it so simple to decorate,Just make sure your peaches are nice and ripe to avoid them being bland!

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  3. I know,this cake was so easy to make look amazing,simply topped with fresh peaches!

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  4. I made the exact same mistake when I made this cake yesterday! I had gotten 2 sticks of butter out, one for the cake and one for the frosting, and then proceeded to put both in the cake! how odd is that? :)

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  5. Haha that's so odd that we both managed to make the same mistake,but at least the cake still turned out pretty delicious :)

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