Peach Sheet Cake with Peach Compote and Buttercream Frosting

When life gives you peaches… you make peach cake! I have a fun canning campaign coming up that I am excited to share with you. I bet you can guess that it involved peaches. I ordered about 12 pounds of peaches, in fact, for this project. As I was wandering out to the studio, I decided to double check the recipe to make sure that everything was ready when I realized that the recipe specifically stated that white flesh peaches could not be used. “I hope the peaches I ordered aren’t white flesh peaches…” I thought to myself.

Lo and behold… they were. Oops. So after ordering 12 pounds of yellow flesh peaches, I was left with quite a bit of fruit that no longer served a purpose. While I could not can them as I had planned, I decided I would bake about half of them up into something delicious, and eat the remaining half fresh while freezing whatever was left over. And so, here is the cake that I made with the white flesh peaches! You certainly can use any peach that you like. Be prepared that if you use yellow peaches, the color of your cake will obviously be a bit different.

Making Leavened cakes, historically:

This morning, I spent a portion of my time reading through a new book about historical cooking and the women that wrote the first published cookbooks. I was quite fascinated with the chapter on Amelia Simmons, the woman who wrote the first American cookbook in 1747. In it, she uses a new ingredient called pearl ash, which derives from potash, to help leaven baked goods. The author goes on to describe that this was the first recorded use of an American leavener of this kind and that it paved the way for baking powder and baking soda that are more popular in American style cooking, such as muffins or quick breads. I honestly did not realize that those ingredients were something profoundly American and not necessarily historically used in other places in the world. I thought that was kind of cool!

What is pearl ash, you maybe be wondering? It’s a white granular substance, an alkaline salt, made from potassium carbonate. It’s made by lixiviating wood ash and evaporating the lye. This makes it useful in making soap and glass as well. Pearlash was popular in the mid to late 1700s until 1840, when Saleratus was introduced, which is closer in chemical structure to baking soda.

This little history lesson made me think of this recipe for a simple sheet pan peach cake that uses both baking powder and baking soda. Isn’t it fun to learn where our food comes from? The book I was reading was Women in the Kitchen by Anne Willan.

the method:

This cake is seriously so easy to make. The most time consuming part is waiting for the compote to cool down so that it can be spread over the cake and mixed into the frosting. On the other hand, you can skip the compote altogether and just enjoy the moist peach cake with a vanilla buttercream. The choice is yours! I love the versatility and simplicity of this cake. It’s quite simple and structure, more of a pound or coffee cake style crumb. The fruit could easily be substituted for apple slices or berries.

I hope that you enjoy this simple, summer cake! The peaches will soon be in season everywhere, and this might be a fun recipe to save for later. Some of my favorite recipes that I have developed come from accidental ingredients appearing in my kitchen. I find that I am most creative when I have to figure out what to do with a certain fruit or vegetable that I was not planning to use!

xoxo Kayla

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Peach Sheet Cake with Peach Compote and Buttercream Frosting

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Yield: 12

Author: Kayla Lobermeier

Prep time: 1 HourCook time: 35 MinTotal time: 1 H & 35 M

Ingredients

Peach Cake:

• 1 cup (232 g) salted butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups (300 g) granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 tsp (10 ml) vanilla extract
• 2 1/4 cups (282 g) all-purpose flour
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp grated nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger
• 1/2 cup (120 ml) sour cream or plain Greek yogurt, room temperature
• 4 cups (1064 g) peeled, pitted, and sliced peaches

Peach Compote:

• 2 cups (532 g) peeled, pitted, and sliced peaches
• 1 cup (100 g) granulated sugar
• 1 tsp lemon juice

Peach Buttercream Frosting:

• 1/2 cup (116 g) salted butter, softened
• 1/4 cup (60 ml) peach compote
• 5-6 cups (900 - 1080 g) powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• Peach slices and edible flowers, for decorating

Instructions

To make the cake:

1. Preheat the oven to 350° F. Generously butter and flour a 9x13-inch cake pan and set this aside.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Then beat in each egg individually until well incorporated, followed by the vanilla. Set this aside for now.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger. Begin to add this dry mixture to the wet ingredients alternately with the sour cream or yogurt. Stir until everything is moistened and there are no longer clumps of flour visible. Then, stir in the peaches. The batter that was once quite thick will now be more like a traditional cake batter.
4. Spread this batter into the prepared cake pan. Bake the cake for 30 to 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let the cake rest in the pan until room temperature. You may leave it covered on the counter or place it into the refrigerator to cool.

To make the compote:

1. In a small saucepan, combine the peaches, sugar, and lemon juice. Place the pan over medium-high heat and bring the fruit to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar.
2. Turn the heat to medium-low and simmer the compote for about 10 to 15 minutes or until it begins to thicken. Pour the compote into a bowl or warmed glass jar. Let it cool to room temperature.
3. Reserve 1/4 cup (60 ml) of the compote for the frosting.

To make the frosting:

1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and reserved 1/4 cup (60 ml) of compote. Add the powdered sugar and vanilla and mix on high speed with an electric handheld mixer until it comes to a consistency that you prefer. If it is too thick, you may thin it out with a splash of milk.

To assemble the cake:

1. Spread the remaining peach compote over the top of the cake and let it soak in. Then, spread over the frosting.
2. Decorate the top of the cake with little edible flowers and extra slices of peaches. Cut the cake into 12 slices. Serve at room temperature.
3. This cake may be stored, covered, in the refrigerator for about 4 days.

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