Michelle Palmer: Juicy peaches in an upside-down cake (recipe)

Look at them peaches! My Uncle Bill Pearce was a POW for four years during the Korean War. He said that during that time he would reminisce peach season as a child. He remembered when his mom would can peaches and to see the sunlight peering through the jar of peaches was one of the most beautiful things to ever see.

To this day when I see homemade canned peaches I think of the story he told me. You know it is quite beautiful!

As it turns out, peaches were the first invasive plant to hit North America.

“In 1539, the Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto landed with 600 men near what is today Tampa Bay, Florida. They explored and raided through the territories of many tribes living in what is now the southeastern United States – at that time claimed by Spain as a new territory. de Soto is also believed to have introduced two species that came to define the Deep Southern wilderness: hogs and peaches. Both rapidly spread, even becoming invasive in the landscape. A few years later, we have records of Spanish missionaries introducing the peach again in Florida and Mexico. Native peoples in the Southeast immediately recognized what we know today: that the peach is a truly wonderful fruit. Indigenous communities across the eastern seaboard planted peach pits around their villages and in fruit orchards, watching as the precocious trees grew rapidly and produced an abundance of food that could be eaten fresh, cooked, or preserved for the lean months. Word and seed of this new abundant fruit spread northward along indigenous trading routes, and peach plantings cropped up around many villages and tribal settlements throughout the Deep South, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast,” Max Paschall on Sept. 5, 2018.

My neighbor Tim Ranalla called and said I have a lot of peaches would you like some? I am not going to give a recipe for canning peaches that is more like the canning Queen Linda Marrone’s thing, thankfully. In this recipe you can use canned or fresh peaches…

Gingerbread Upside-down cake
Butter for buttering pan
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 peaches, halved & pitted (or canned) (mine were smaller so I used more)
1 ½ teaspoon ground ginger
8 whole almonds
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ cup dark brown sugar
1 egg
½ cup skim milk
¼ cup sunflower oil

Directions
1. Preheat oven 350 Fahrenheit
2. Brush bottom 9-inch spring form pan with butter
3. Sprinkle bottom of pan with 1 tablespoon brown sugar
4. Arrange peaches cut side down with one whole almond in each
5. Wisk together whole wheat flour, baking soda, ginger, and cinnamon
6. Stir in the brown sugar
7. In a separate bowl beat egg, milk, and sunflower oil.
8. Mix dry ingredients with wet ingredients.
9. Pour mixture evenly over the peaches and bake for 35-40 minutes, until firm to touch.
10. Run knife around outside of cake between the pan and the cake (or yours will look like mine missing sides of the cake)
11. Flip over on to plate and remove pan
12. Serve warm

Michelle Palmer has been cooking in the area for over three decades, owner of Absolutely Michelle’s Chef-for-Hire.