common kitchen: brown-butter cornmeal stone-fruit upside-down cake
a long name, a perfect summer cake
We’re in the thick of it. I have lost my will to make soup or most things thoroughly cooked, we’ve embraced cold sandwiches for dinner more than twice this week, and my fridge contains four different kinds of fresh fruit that need using before they go by. Dark, sweet cherries sent by my sister in an organic seasonal fruit subscription box, red raspberries and red currants picked at our neighbors’ farm, and 3 more apricots leftover from the last time I made this cake you’re reading about.
The raspberries will go into an Alison Roman Raspberry Ricotta Cake later this afternoon, the cherries I think might just get eaten for lunch, the red currants I’m wondering if I can jam or jelly or curd, and the apricots I might turn into the tiniest jar of stovetop jam to use for brushing pastries and croissants, or maybe incorporating into a fruity little donut glaze. Eating by the handful, jamming, baking, preserving, savoring, letting the juice drip down your chin – we are making the most of the summer fruit as it comes quick and passes through.
As far as the baking goes, I love a good crisp (I have a favorite recipe in my spring + summer recipe zine) and a scoop of peach or blackberry crisp can be a perfect summer breakfast with plain yogurt. A cobbler is something special too, especially when you’ve got plenty of juicy berries and cream to whip. And pie! Well, if you’re here you probably already know how I feel about pie. All-butter, all summer, worth every sweaty minute pitting peaches or cherries or peeling pears or rubbing butter and flour between my fingers or rolling out dough to a perfect thin sheet before it warms up again. All those options for baking summer fruit and still, I wanted a cake to serve with ice cream and I wanted one that was sweet and earthy and a little rustic and very fruit-forward.
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