Grilled Peaches and Pound Cake With Cider Vinegar Caramel Sauce Recipe

Throughout highschool, Labor Day weekend at all times felt just like the final hurrah of summer season. I keep in mind sitting at my classroom desk days later, eager for the hotter months. The humorous factor is, it was nonetheless scorching as hell outdoors. Do not make the identical mistake as my teenage self, pondering summer season has ended simply because the holidays have. We do not have to swap sandals for sweaters but.

My birthday is the week earlier than Labor Day, and rising up (and even now) a lot of my mates are away. However today, I am by no means unhappy for friendless birthdays; they simply imply I haven’t got to share my cake. One yr, a few decade in the past, my spouse made me Karen Demasco’s peach upside-down cake for my birthday, a recipe she present in New York Magazine. Peach is my summer season fruit of selection,* and the recipe’s gentle buttery cake will get drenched in caramel and is topped with the chewy, gooey morsels that kind on the underside of the pan. I’ve requested it yearly since.

I date this love again to the summer season of 1995, when, as a few of you might recall, a band referred to as the Presidents of the USA of America got here out with their hit radio single, “Peaches”. The music’s archetypal four-bar construction was frequent to many alternative-rock hits at the moment, nevertheless it created an simple earworm. Whereas many of the summertime anthems of that period vanished annually to unlock house for the subsequent one, this one caught with me for some motive, and, together with it, the peach turned my lifelong fruit of selection.

However my birthday is the one time she’s prepared to make it, which implies I would like to seek out different methods to scratch that itch. Just lately, I considered trying a rendition of it on the grill. My preliminary thought was to bake a cake in a pan over the coals. This was an concept that Critical Eats’s resident pastry professional Stella Parks refused to help (politely, in fact, as a result of she’s a real southerner). I subsequent proposed we make sponge truffles utilizing the radiant warmth of extinguished coals; this too was delicately shot down. Stella’s objection was that the extremely variable temperature of a grill would make it close to inconceivable to put in writing a recipe that different cooks might efficiently repeat. And so, collectively, we sought options, a method to replicate the flavors of that celebratory peach cake with out having to work too laborious (in honor of the final weeks of summer season, in fact).

Stella brilliantly urged I take advantage of pound cake as a base—both retailer purchased or homemade—as a result of it is one thing you should buy or bake days upfront; it may even be frozen, if want be. And it’ll toast up shortly and fantastically on the grill. It is a fantastic trick for any fruit-based summer season desserts, it even works as a cheater’s strawberry shortcake.

I knew I wished to grill the peaches as effectively. A part of the purpose is to caramelize the present sugars within the fruit, however I like to enhance that impact by dipping the lower face of every peach half in sugar, which melts and deepens in taste because it cooks over the coals, whereas forming a candied floor that helps entice a few of the juices within the fruit even because it turns into meltingly tender.

For the grilled model of my birthday cake’s goldmine of caramel, I regarded for just a little elevate from—you guessed it—vinegar. I mix apple cider vinegar with sugar to make a candy and bitter gastrique (the French time period for a sweet-sour sauce made out of caramel and vinegar), turning it velvety by including chunks of butter. The fruitiness of apple cider vinegar makes it a no brainer for fruit-based desserts. A phrase on cooking vinegar over a flame: The vapors of boiling vinegar can knock you off your ft, so stand again and keep away from inhaling deeply proper over it. Your nasal passages will thanks.

When assembled, the grilled slice of pound cake is crisp and buttery, the peach is good and smoky, the caramel is compellingly acidic and wealthy, whereas a dollop of chilly whipped cream crowns the dish. If that is the flavour summit of summer season’s finish, it is price ready for. I will fortunately savor all of it yr lengthy.

September 2017