Just peachy

The other Saturday, Betty Ann Chapple stopped me at the farmers market, handing me a newspaper section and a recipe.

The newspaper section immediately got my attention. It came from The Capital newspaper in Annapolis, Md., near where I grew up.

The paper included a story about the annual Peach Festival of Eastport United Methodist Church in Annapolis. The star of the festival is a peach cake that church members make, which was the recipe Chapple gave me.

Chapple, who regularly visits her daughter's family in Annapolis, had saved that newspaper since last July, about the time of the church's festival. But it wasn't until April that she got around to contacting the church to get the recipe. Now it's peach season again and time to act.

Seeing the newspaper immediately flew me back to my childhood.

In North Carolina, we make a lot of peach cobbler and a fair amount of peach pie. But when I was a kid, my mother made peach cake. And her recipe is one of a select few I still have in her handwriting.

What my mother called peach cake is called Baltimore peach cake by others in Maryland. It technically is a sweet yeast bread topped with peaches, and it's pretty well-known around Baltimore and Annapolis — or at least it used to be.

I was excited when I read about the festival and its peach cake. But I was confused when I looked at the recipe. This wasn't my mother's peach cake. It was similar in construction, but it used baking powder instead of yeast, which completely changes the taste, texture and appearance. It also had cinnamon, which is not in Baltimore peach cake.

I called Chapple. She had some peaches and agreed to make Eastport's version.

The next morning, Chapple's husband delivered a big chunk of cake to me. Chapple and I had the same reaction: The cake looked a lot like Moravian sugar cake. It's short, and it has a mottled, craterlike appearance because the peaches are plopped on the batter before it is baked.

"It's kind of chewy and gummy," Chapple said. I also thought that it tasted underbaked, as if the weight of the peaches prevented the batter from rising properly.

Chapple called the church and was told that the cake was supposed to look and taste like this. I heard the same when I called Jill Petticord, the church member who sent Chapple the recipe and who makes 60 large, restaurant-size pans every year for the festival.

Petticord and a team of cooks go through 40 bushels of peaches to make desserts for about 600 diners, and many are bought and taken home.

"This will be our 36th year," Petticord said. "It's a big event. Everyone at the church helps out."

This year's festival will be Aug. 6; more information, including photos of previous festivals, is available at www.eastportumc.org.

I wondered if Baltimore peach cake had changed over the years, to a cake made with baking powder instead of yeast. But Petticord said that the church's recipe came from the Midwest, by way of church member Adele Jeffries, who had lived in Missouri.

The one problem in all this is that Chapple had halved the recipe. She did this by necessity. She didn't have the 15-by-24-inch jellyroll pan called for in the recipe.

Like many baking recipes, this one probably doesn't work when halved. I suspect it needs adjustment.

Chapple used a 7½-by-13-inch pan and some extra milk to thin the batter because it seemed too thick. Still, she and I wondered if it came out the way it does when Petticord makes cake. More to the point, we wondered if we would like it better if she were able to make the full recipe without halving it.

Without someone from Eastport seeing and tasting the cake, it's hard to know how close Chapple came. But hearing Petticord talk, I'm pretty sure that the cake should have been lighter.

Still, Chapple said, "It wasn't a total failure. My husband enjoyed it over ice cream and peaches."

But she wouldn't make it again. "In all honesty, I prefer a Southern cobbler," she said.

The story almost ended there. I thought about playing around with the halved recipe, but that could take a lot of time — and a lot of wasted peaches and other ingredients — before I found something I liked. And like Chapple, I don't have the correct pan for the larger recipe.

In the end, I decided it was time to make my mother's peach cake. I'm happy to report that it's just as delicious as I remember it.

But don't take my word for it. Listen to what Chapple had to say after I gave her a big piece to take home.

"This is a winner," she said. "It's just something that is so soothing to my palate."

Now I have to allow that she may have said that to be polite. But, hey, I'm biased, so I think she actually did enjoy the cake.

The story may not be over yet. "I'm going to be up there (in Annapolis) soon. And if I can, I'm going to go to this festival," Chapple said.

"If I went to their festival and saw their cake and ate it, I think I could make it and come pretty close."

Stay tuned.

In the meantime, here is my mother’s recipe, adapted as I now make it, and the full-size Eastport United Methodist recipe supplied by Petticord.

mhastings@wsjournal.com

727-7394

Baltimore Peach Cake

This is a revised version of the recipe that my mother made. I have simplified the method and reduced the recipe to make just one cake. The raspberry jam is mainly for color. The raspberry jam and apricot preserves may be substituted with a different flavor jam, jelly or preserves.

Makes 1 cake.

Cake:

½ cup lukewarm milk

2 tablespoons sugar, or to taste, plus more for peaches and baked cake

½ teaspoon salt

1 package dry yeast

1 egg, room temperature

2 tablespoons softened butter

1¾ cups all-purpose flour, divided

2 tablespoons raspberry jam, optional

2 cups fresh, thinly sliced peaches

Juice from ½ lemon

Glaze:

3 tablespoons apricot jam

1½ teaspoons boiling water

To serve:

Sweetened whipped cream or vanilla ice cream

1. To make cake, first mix lukewarm milk, about 2 tablespoons sugar, salt and yeast, stirring until yeast is dissolved. Stir in egg and softened butter.

2. Grease a 9-inch cake pan. Set aside.

3. Mix in half of the flour with the yeast mixture, beginning with wooden spoon, then using your hands. Add remaining flour until dough begins to leave sides of bowl.

4. Turn out dough on lightly floured board and knead until smooth and dough springs back to the touch, 7 to 10 minutes. Stretch dough a bit as needed until it is about the size of the bottom of the pan, then place in the greased pan. If desired, spread thin layer of raspberry jam over dough. (Fingers seem to work best for spreading the jam.)

5. In a bowl, mix peaches with lemon juice and sugar to taste. Evenly spread peaches over dough in the pan. Cover pan with plastic wrap and set aside in a warm place to rise for about 1 hour.

6. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Remove wrap from pan and bake cake about 25 minutes. Begin checking cake after 20 minutes and remove from oven as soon as it tests done, springing back to the touch. Sprinkle with sugar to taste.

7. Make glaze in a small bowl by combining boiling water and apricot jam. Brush glaze over hot cake. When cake has cooled slightly, gently remove from pan and cool to room temperature on a wire rack. To serve, top with a dollop of sweetened whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. If desired, cake can be sprinkled with powdered sugar.

Recipe from Michael Hastings, adapted from Eleanor Hooper Hastings.

Peach Cake

Jill Petticord said she uses both a generous amount of peaches — that should form a single but complete layer over the batter — and a lot of cinnamon.

4 eggs

2 cups milk

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 teaspoon almond extract

4 cups all-purpose flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons melted butter

6 cups sliced fresh peaches, drained of juices

Cinnamon sugar, to taste

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Spray a 15-by-24-inch jellyroll pan with cooking spray. Beat the eggs and combine with milk and the extracts.

2. In a bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Gradually beat dry ingredients into wet mixture until smooth, with no lumps. Pour into pan. Drizzle batter with melted butter. Gently and evenly spread peaches on top of batter. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar to taste.

3. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or just until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Sprinkle again with more cinnamon sugar to taste while cake is still hot. Serve by itself, or with vanilla ice cream.

Recipe from Jill Petticord of Eastport United Methodist Church in Annapolis, Md.