Peach Blueberry Cake

I feel lucky to work where I do. It’s a special environment… people always running up and down the hall, yelling, exclusive concerts sometimes, a jock putting out a “vibe” to my coworker every day – it’s a lot of fun. Another perk is that we often get food dropped off by local businesses – frozen yogurt, cakes, barbecue, cupcakes, and most recently… PEACHES!

On Thursday, a farm dropped off a case of peaches to one of the morning shows. When the show was over, a coworker stopped by my office to tell my there were peaches in one of the studios, then challenged me to bake something with them. Free, local peaches right before a holiday weekend?? That’s an easy challenge I was more than happy to accept! I just had to decide what to bake. I considered a peach pie or a cobbler, but neither were calling out to me.

Then I remembered all the blueberries in the freezer. A few weeks ago, Whole Foods had a one-day sale on organic blueberries – $1.99/pint. We picked up eight pints originally but were convinced to buy a case to bring down the cost-per-pint, so now our freezer is overflowing with blueberries. What better summer fruit to pair with peaches?

A quick search yielded Food Gal’s Peach Blueberry Cake. It looked absolutely perfect for a 4th of July dessert.

Peach-Blueberry Cake
Adapted from Food Gal

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup butter (2 sticks) – COLD, cut into 1/2″-1″ pieces
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 4 pounds peaches (7-8 large peaches), cut into 8 slices each
• 1 1/2 cups blueberries
• 1 1/2 Tbsp lemon juice
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3 Tbsp flour
• 2 Tbsp quick-cooking tapioca

1.Preheat oven to 375 degrees if using a light-colored pan or 350 degrees if using a dark colored pan. Lightly butter and flour a 9″ or 9 1/2″ spring-form pan. (Note: Food Gal’s recipe doesn’t include buttering/flouring the pan, but I did this to ensure nothing stuck, despite the amount of butter in the dough.)

2. Mix together the 3 cups flour, 1 cup sugar, baking powder and salt. Transfer to a food processor.

3. Add in the cold butter and pulse until the mixture is mostly pea-sized lumps.

4. Add in the eggs and vanilla and pulse until the dough begins to form a ball.

5. Press the dough into the spring-form pan – on the bottom and up the sides. This may require that you flour your hands since the dough is really sticky. Chill for 10 in the freezer to firm up.

6. Grind up tapioca until it’s a fine powder. This would work best with a spice grinder, but I used a coffee grinder. Mix with 3 Tbsp flour and 3/4 cup sugar.

7. Lightly toss together blueberries, peaches, lemon juice and tapioca/flour/sugar mixture, and place the mixture into the spring-form pan.

8. Cover the pan lightly and place on a cookie sheet.

9. Bake for 1 hour 45 minutes or until the edges are lightly brown and cooked through, and the filling is bubbling lightly. My oven took about 1 hour 35 minutes.

10. Cool in pan for 15-20 minutes, then remove the outside of the pan.

I would make a few adjustments next time. First, I would make to this recipe would be to reduce the amount of the pastry dough. Food Gal doubled the amount of dough in the original recipe from Gourmet because there wasn’t enough dough to cover the pan. Although the crust was delicious, I would like a little less of it around the edge so the fruit stands out even more.

I would also like to use a little less sugar in the filling next time – maybe try just a 1/2 cup in the filling? It wasn’t overly sweet, but I think it would be improved with less sugar. The filling also needs a little more tapioca next time if I use frozen blueberries again. As you can see in the photos, the filling became way too runny and didn’t hold its shape the way I hoped.

All that said, this cake was a lovely summer dessert, which would be even better served with fresh whipped cream, vanilla ice cream or hard sauce. I can’t wait to try this recipe again!

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