Peach Upside Down Cake

It has been a long time since my last blog update. I am hoping that I will be able to update the blog more frequently now. Hope you will all enjoy this recipe as much as I enjoyed making it.
Summer is a wonderful season with respect to all the varieties of fruits that the grocery stored are inundated with. Boxes are brimful with peaches and I relish this delicious and juicy fruits.  I love including these as toppings on waffles or making peach preserve. I wanted to bake a cake recently and while staring at my fridge contents, I thought why not make a peach cake.

I scoured various sites on the internet and the multiple cooking books I have, including reviewing my pineapple upside down cake recipe. It took me about four days to finally decide on a recipe I wanted to follow. It was for an apple upside down cake from Cook's Illustrated that I modified to make the delicious and very spongy and soft peach upside down cake.

Ingredients
For the upside down topping
5 ripe peaches, cut into slices about 1/2 inch in thickness
3 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon lemon juice

For the cake
1 cup all purpose flour/maida
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
2 eggs
6 tbsp butter, melted and cooled
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tsp vanilla essence

Method
Grease a baking pan and then line it with parchment paper. Grease the parchment paper and dust it with flour. Preheat the oven to 350F.

For the topping
Melt butter in a pan and then half of the peach slices to it. Cook these in the butter till they start to soften and then add the rest of the peach slices, sugar and lemon juice and stir till the sugar dissolves and the peach slices are coated in the sugar. These will be quite a bit of syrup that gets created as the peach releases juices. Transfer these to the cake pan and arrange them to form a layer.

To make the cake batter
Whisk or sieve the dry ingredients including the flour, baking powder, and salt. In another bowl, whisk the sugar, brown sugar and eggs till it is well whipped and the eggs lighten a little in color. Then whisk in the melted butter slowly till it is complete incorporated. Add the sour cream and vanilla essence till completely combined. Fold flour into this mixture till combined and then pour this batter over the layer of peaches in the baking tin. This is a thick batter and is better to spoon it and spread it with the back of the spoon as your layer it over the peaches.

Bake it in the pre-heated oven for about 30-40 mins, till the cake is completely cooked. To test if the cake is cooked, insert a knife or toothpick into the center of the cake and remove it. If it comes out clean, it is cooked.

Place the tin on a cooling rack and let it cool till you can easily touch it. Then run a knife around the edge of the pan, if the cake has not completely come away from the sides, to loosen it. Invert the pan over a baking rack and then remove the pan. If you want, you can let the excess syrup drip off at this stage. I didn't do this. I then inverted it back onto a another baking rack and let it cool completely. This let the excess syrup get absorbed into the cake making it very  moist. Transfer to a platter and serve after it cools down completely.

Tips
To melt the butter, cut it into cubes, put it in a microwave safe bowl and microwave it in 20 second intervals till butter is almost melted and then stir to melt completely in the residual heat. Else, it can be melted in a small saucepan on the stove top. Sour cream can be substituted with full fat yogurt or green yogurt. I used an 11 inch tin with 2 inch sides and you can see that the cake layer turned out thin. It would be a thicker cake if a 9 inch pan is used. Make sure that it is deep enough to hold the topping as well as the cake with at least 2 inch sides.

Palmiers or Elephant Ears (Puff Pastry Cookies)

When  I was a growing up, as a treat, my Mom used to get me a packet of these special heart shaped cookies. I think they were called Little Hearts. Last year I happened to spot a packet of heart shaped cookies in the local store. They had a a lovely glaze, and they reminded me of those childhood cookies, though they were much larger in size. So, I decided to try them out and bought a packet. I am so glad that I did because these turned out to be almost the same. Of course, I never saw them in the store again and I also hadn't written down the name of the cookie that I could search for it. Then, a few months later, I caught a cooking show online and saw that it was called Palmiers or Elephant ears and was rather easy to make. I furiously noted down the recipe. I finally made it a couple of weeks ago. I remembered that I had a packet of frozen puff pastry sheets in the freezer and needed to use them up. I didn't have a lot of time and wanted to make something easy, and as I was browsing through my recipe book, I came across the palmiers recipe. It took less than an hour including the baking time to cook these wonderfully delicious cookies and all of us enjoyed it thoroughly with some coffee.

Ingredients
1 cup sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1 sheet puff pastry, defrosted per package instructions

Method
Preheat the oven to 400 F. Line a cooking sheet with parchment paper.

Mix the sugar and salt well. Spread out half a cup of the sugar and salt mix, onto the surface on which you will roll out the pastry sheet. Spread it out into an even layer of about 13 by 13 inch square. Then spread the pastry sheet on this layer of sugar. Then spread the remaining half cup of sugar and salt mixture onto the top of the pastry sheet so that the pastry is between two layers of the sugar and salt mix.

Now roll the pastry sheet out so that it is approximately 13 by 13 inches in size. This will embed the sugar onto the top and the bottom side of the pastry sheet. Now, fold the sides square of the square towards the center so that they meet exactly midway. Repeat this step and again fold the sides of the folds created in the first step towards the center, so they meet midway. Then fold one half over the other half. Finally, it will look like there are 6 layers of the pastry sheet on top of each other formed into a roll.

Then cut the dough roll into thin pieces about half a centimeter in width. Place the slices cut side up onto the cookie sheet. Bake this in the oven for 7 - 10  minutes on one side till caramelized. Then flip the cookies over and bake the cookies on the other side for 4-5 more minutes till cookies are caramelized on the other side as well. As these cookies bake, the folds will open and puff up and the cookies will get the heart shape. Cool these on a cooling/baking rack.

Tips
There will be some sugar left after you roll out the pastry dough, you can sprinkle this on top of the cookies before baking for additional sweetness. You can also mix in cinnamon into the sugar, salt mixture for a different flavor. Store these after they are completely cool in an airtight container. The crisp cookies last for a couple weeks and do not have to be refrigerated.