Preserved Peaches one day, Peach Bundt Cake the next!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  To all the Canadians celebrating today, I hope you have a fun filled day with lots of turkey, family and friends.

We had an amazing weekend away, I was spoilt by my husband to a surprise weekend in the beautiful Haliburton, Ontario surrounded by amazing Fall colours, wild turkey, deer and lots of lakes!  And then yesterday we got to spend the day with Jonathan's family and cousins at their cottage with a delicious Thanksgiving dinner.  What a great weekend :)

So now, it's a bonus day off work and it's catch up day!

... Starting with... my Peaches and Cream Cake that I promised you a couple of weeks ago.  I made this peach bundt cake for our annual choir day out and meeting which of course took place along with a pot luck!  You already saw the DIY cute and easy cake bunting I made to music it up but the cake hasn't been blogged yet.  So today here it is!  

We were so lucky to be given a delicious jar of preserved peaches from Jonathan's grandmother a few weeks ago, so when I was thinking of something to make for the choir (thinking about what would feed everyone, but also be kind of new and fun to try) these jumped into my brain.  Peaches!  I've never baked with peaches before so this was perfect... off to the internet to find a recipe.

I found this great Week of Menus recipe that I slightly altered, but it served a perfect starting point for this bundt cake :)  

For the cake...

Ingredients:

3 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup unsalted butter

1 3/4 cups granulated sugar

4 large eggs

1 vanilla pod, split (the original recipe called for 1 pod, but I actually only had 1/2 of one!  The flavour still came through just fine luckily!)

1 cup sour cream

1 cup diced peaches (as you know, I used preserved peaches, but you can go with fresh if they're in season!)

Method:

1.  Preheat oven to 350°F/ 180°C and grease and lightly flour the inside of a 10 inch bundt pan.

2.  Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl and set aside for later.

3.  Using a mixer, beat the butter until creamy (around 2 minutes) and gradually add the sugar and beat at medium-high speed until the mixture is light and fluffy.

4.  Beat in the eggs, one at a time.  Beat mixture after each addition.  Scrape the sides of the bowl down as necessary.  

5.  Scrape out the vanilla seeds from the pod and beat into the egg mixture. Keep the empty vanilla pod - don't throw it out yet, you'll need it for the syrup!

6.  At a low speed, add the flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the sour cream but beginning and ending with the flour.

7.  Scoop half of the batter into the bundt pan and spread with a spatula.

8.  Add diced peaches to the first half of the batter.  I chose to keep the peaches in the centre, so that the batter would completely surround the peaches keeping them right in the middle of the cake, with none escaping out of the sides!

9.  Scoop the remaining half of the batter on top of the peaches.  Spread with a spatula to smooth down the top surface.

10.  Bake in the centre of the oven for 50 - 60 minutes (mine actually took 65 minutes to be precise!  Keep an eye on it and test with a cake tester/skewer to check it is cooked through).  Cool the cake in the bundt pan on a cooling rack for 10 minutes then flip out onto another cooling rack placed on top of a baking sheet or tray to continue cooling.  

And for the syrup - make while the cake is baking...

Ingredients:

1/3 cup fresh peach puree

2/3 cup granulated sugar

1 tablespoon peach syrup from the jar of preserved peaches OR 1 tablespoon orange juice

1 empty vanilla pod (kept from earlier in the cake baking!)

Method:

1.  Take 4 slices of peach (leftover from the jar of preserved peaches), and puree it until smooth.  Depending on your size of slices it may or may not make exactly 1/3 cup of puree but that's what you're aiming for - try it until you get that much puree!

2.  Combine peach puree, sugar, empty vanilla pod and syrup (or juice) in a small saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves - around 3 or 4 minutes.

3.  Remove the pan from teh heat, and using a pastry brush, dab the syrup generously all over the surface of the warm cake, allowing it to soak into the cake before giving it another coat.  Then let the cake cool completely.

Then when you're done making and baking, it's photo time of course!

For this cake, as it was for a choir event I was excited to try making some cake bunting... Hehe BUNTING for the BUNDT cake (joke credit to my husband as he proof reads this!)...

I thought this would be the perfect cake for some bunting... with the poles on either side of the cake, music flags strung out over the hole of the cake.  If you missed the tutorial on this, click here!  It was really quick and easy to make, and I thought it was a really cute little way to glam up the cake :)

And of course, a little notecard to tell everybody what the cake was!  I like to know what I'm about to eat, especially if, on first glance you can't exactly see what would be inside, or what the flavours are.

I chose to call this a 'Peaches and Cream' cake... I know traditionally, peaches and cream would be sliced peaches and whipped cream - but the peaches are there for sure, and the addition of the vanilla pod gives it the vanilla cream flavour :)

It tasted really delicious, the preserved peaches were even better than fresh peaches in my opinion - because they have been soaking in a delicious peach sugar syrup for a while before even going into this cake!  The cake was moist, and had such a thick peach glaze on the outside which gave it a sugary crunch before the mouthful of cake!

Fresh peaches, peach syrup, along with vanilla cake = yum!  

Any more jars of preserved peaches out there, I'd be happy to receive them!!!