The fruit flies are taking over my kitchen. I think there is a co-ordinated campaign to make me crazy. Even when I touch a cupboard door, a little fly zings overhead. But it makes me so sad to put all my fruit is in the fridge—not just because my glorious peaches are wrinkling but because I don’t like biting into cold fruit (I know talk to my dentist, use Sensodyne). So I am on a mission to use it all up quickly. As usual my kids are working against me. One child keeps asking for mangoes – which I have to say are not looking too good this time of year and also go against my attempts at eating local. (If you can’t eat local in August when can you?). And the other actually ate an entire bag of crappy supermarket frozen blueberries yesterday, ignoring my 12 dollar basket of blueberries in the fridge, and staining everything in the process – including his toothbrush.
So I am inspired to bake. A little heat will be worth turning my peaches and berries into a cake that I can take up north. I make this cake all the time in summer because it’s easy and I can throw whatever I want on top. And I like it when people are really impressed that I bake. It’s from a brilliant book called Classic Home Desserts by Richard Sax. Every baked item you can think of is in there in many different forms. Sax calls it the “All-Time Best Summer Fruit Torte” and he got it from Marian Burros who makes it with halved purple plums. It works with raspberries, apples and cranberries too.
All-Time Best Summer Fruit Torte
Makes one 8-inch or a thin 9-inch single layer cake. Can be doubled.
½ cup (one stick) unsalted butter, softened
¾ cup sugar
1 tsp pure vanilla
2 large eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
2 peaches or nectarines, peeled, pitted and sliced
½ cup blueberries
Sugar and cinnamon for sprinkling
Preheat the oven to 350 and butter cake pan.
Beat (in bowl with wooden spoon, or with an electric mixer) the butter until light. Add sugar and vanilla until fluffy. Beat in egg at one at a time.
In a small bowl, add flour, baking powder and salt. Add to butter mixture and stir until just combined.
Scrape the batter into pan, smooth the top. Scatter the fruit randomly and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.
Bake until golden brown and baked through about 45 minutes. Cool on a rack, serve at room temperature.
Addendum: Eshun has just told me that making a fruit fly trap actually works. Here’s what she does: she adds balsamic vinegar, and a piece of old fruit into a shallow bowl, covers it with saran wrap and makes lots of teeny, tiny holes into the top so the fruit flies fly in and then get trapped and drown in the vinegar. And yes, she does get some satisfaction from watching them die.
