Breakfast: Polenta With Peaches

Our Farmer's Market smells like orchard lately: peaches are in it's season. Baskets filled with a velvety fruits and delicate aroma invite the visitors from many stands. We've been eating peaches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and in between for two weeks. Our home is perfumed with a lovely peach aroma. 
I am experimenting with peaches in unusual (for us) meals. For example: polenta for breakfast with peaches and agave nectar. Easy, but healthy and delicious start of the day. Why it is unusual? Because we eat polenta with cheeses, mushrooms, vegetables, in other words savory. 

Polenta with peaches and agave nectar

Cook polenta following the instruction on the package, and serve with peach slices and agave nectar. 

Dear friends, have you made an unusual meal with the peaches? 

See you,
Marina

Easy Berry Cake

Easy Berry Cake

This recipe I found in the recent edition of America's Test Kitchen called Best Summer Desserts, which came in full color this time. As you know, I don't bake that often, maybe 3-4 times a year for a very special occasions (bread and savory baking doesn't count). Also a high motivation is needed to put in in a baking mode. This time I had the occasion, all was needed was a motivation. That's where the magazine played it's role: I turned page by page until one photo struck me. It momentarily brought me back to my grandmother's country home: table under the cherry tree was covered with white airy tablecloth, a bawl of fresh summer berries, a clay pitcher with fresh milk, and a summer berries cake. Fresh breeze from the river would swing through the play area with an inviting smell of cake would gather us, kids, around the table for a snack. 
I lingered over that page for some time before I continued reading. And then I went back to that photo,  and idle in the moment before I put on an apron to carry on to baking.

Ingredients

Easy Berry Cake 

Ingredients:


1 1/2  cup (200 gram) all-purpose flour
1 1/2  teaspoon (8 gram) baking powder
1/2   teaspoon (3 gram) salt
8  tablespoon (120 gram) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup (100 gram) sugar Agave nectar
2 large eggs plus one large white, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup (80 ml) whole milk, room temperature
2 cups (400 gram) fresh berries: blueberries, blackberries, raspberries

Smooth the batter evenly in the pan

For the topping:
1 cup (250 gram) sour cream
1 1/2 tablespoon (8 ml) Agave nectar
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest 
1 teaspoon lemon juice


1. Preheat oven to 350 F (175C). Oven rack is on the middle position.


2. Combine flour, baking powder and salt in bowl.


3. In a stand mixer beat together butter and Agave nectar (or any other sweetener of your choice) until butter is pale and fluffy).


4. Add eggs and white, one at a time. Add vanilla and beat until well mixed. Scrape the bawl and a paddle, if needed.


5. Start adding flour in portions, alternating with milk. 


6. Stop the mixer, and give batter a good stir to make sure all ingredients are mixed well. 


7. Gently fold berried into the batter.


8. Transfer batter to a well greased 9 inch pan, even the top.


9. Bake 35-40 minutes, rotating pan in the oven half  way through. Set a kitchen timer for 20 minutes for this task.  When cake is done, toothpick, inserted in the middle of the cake, comes out clean.


10. Cool cake in the pan for 30-60 minutes. 

Topping: whisk together sour cream and Agave nectar. Chill in the refrigerator before serving.
Serve cake with a dollop of topping, sprinkled with a few dollops of lemon juice and lemon zest.

Sour cream topping

To make it diabetic friendly cake for my father, I didn't use any sugar in this cake. I also reduced the amount of sweetener in half in both cake and topping. The cake tasted great with all the fresh berries flavor combination. The original recipe uses whipped heavy cream for topping. I made topping my grandmother's way, with chilled sour cream. 
When teenager had his first slice, he said that he had a feeling that he had something like it before, but doesn't remember me making it. I told him that when he was little, we spend a few summers at grandma's summer cottage, and he did enjoy eating that cake. He doesn't remember anything but the taste. 

My friends, what triggers your good food  memories: 

a photo, a taste, a smell?

See you,

Marina