End of Summer, Stone Fruits and Pound Cake

Whew!  The past nine days have been lovely.  Lovely because, despite several inches of rain and quite a bit of the usual humidity, our day and night temperatures have been surprisingly low for August.  Low enough to actually cook!  So after months of take-out and stovetop-only cooking, I’ve been baking: pumpkin bread, one batch with plums, another with blueberries; salmon with lemon and lots of pepper; and a delicious pound cake.

Pound cake in summer?  Most folks seem to prefer sponge or angel food cake, but I’m a fan of pound cake.  The perk of living in the southern end of the Mid-Atlantic is that we can grow a wide variety of fruit trees: apples, pears and cherries, of course, not to mention the wonderful stone fruits of late summer: peaches, nectarines and plums.  And it’s hard to improve on pound cake with sliced peaches or nectarines.  I could eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

We're lucky enough to have 5 family orchards within 20 miles.
This is the closest; they offer pick-your-own peaches, nectarines and apples.
Or you can just buy already-picked fruits from their little market.

Plus they have great views to the Southeast...

the Southwest...

the Northwest...

and the Northeast.
The pretty weather also blew in some dramatic skies.

My favorite pound cake recipes come from the April 2000 issue of Cooking Light.  And perhaps the best of the bunch is Brown Sugar Pound Cake.  It reads as follows:

Cooking spray

3 tablespoons dry breadcrumbs
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup butter or stick margarine, softened
2 cups packed light brown sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
3 large eggs
1 cup fat-free milk
1 tablespoon powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Coat a 10” tube pan with cooking spray, and dust with the breadcrumbs.

Lightly spoon the flour into dry measuring cups, and level with a knife.  Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl, stir well with a whisk.  Beat the butter in a large bowl at medium speed of a mixer until light and fluffy.  Gradually add brown sugar and vanilla, beating until well blended.  Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.  Add flour mixture to sugar mixture alternately with milk, beating at low speed, beginning and ending with the flour mixture.

Spoon the batter into prepared pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour and 5 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Cool in pan 10 minutes on a wire rack, and remove from pan.  Cool completely on a wire rack.  Sift powdered sugar over top of cake.

I basically follow the recipe as written, except

• I use an old-fashioned 12-cup Bundt pan and reduce the oven temperature to 325 degrees.  The flutes of the Bundt make it really easy to cut small slices of cake.  Sometimes I can slice 24 for a party.
• I grease the pan with butter.  To be honest, I’ve never gotten the hang of cooking sprays and just make a mess.  You can use graham, butter, or whole wheat cracker crumbs for your dry breadcrumbs.  This time I used the crumbs from the bottom of my box of Grape Nuts!
• I don’t worry about fat-free milk.  I just use what’s on hand… this time – 2%.

The Black-and-White Pound Cake is also great and would be delicious served warm with peach ice cream and drizzled with a little chocolate syrup.  The recipe is similar.

Cooking spray

3 tablespoons dry breadcrumbs
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup butter or stick margarine, softened
2 cups granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 large eggs
1 cup 2% reduced-fat milk
¾ cup chocolate syrup
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Coat a 10” tube pan with cooking spray, and dust with the breadcrumbs.

Lightly spoon the flour into dry measuring cups, and level with a knife.  Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl, stir well with a whisk.  Beat the butter in a large bowl at medium speed of a mixer until light and fluffy.  Gradually add granulated sugar and vanilla, beating until well blended.  Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.  Add flour mixture to sugar mixture alternately with milk, beating at low speed, beginning and ending with the flour mixture.

Spoon two-thirds of the batter (about 4 cups) into prepared pan.  Add syrup and baking soda to remaining batter in bowl, stirring just until blended; spoon on top of batter in pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until cake pulls away from sides of pan.  Cool in pan 10 minutes on a wire rack; remove from pan.  Cool completely on a wire rack.  Sift cocoa over top of cake.

Pound cake is easy to freeze for later.  Once the cake has cooled, but before you have sprinkled it with powdered sugar or cocoa, slice up what you think you can’t eat in the next day or so.  Place slices in heavy-duty zip-lock plastic baggies.  Two slices will usually fit in a sandwich size.  Thaw by just bringing to room temperature.  Once thawed, you can also heat them up in the microwave for 15-20 seconds.

Brown Sugar Pound Cake with fresh sliced nectarines and a dollop of yogurt.

So take advantage of your local peaches and nectarines while you can.  Share them with pound cake and friends.  Yum!