In honor of the first day of summer: PEACHES!!!!

Good day to all! It's officially summer here and in honor of this wonderful and glorious season (or so I say until the 100+ temps get here), and mostly for Father's Day, I made Peach Upside Down cake!!! Holy smokes! I've been frequenting a new baking blogger recently, Evil Shenanigans, and she has some delicious looking recipes on her page. Last week I tried her Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Chips, and Sunday I tried this Peach Cake. Let me tell you- it turns out just as beautifully from an amateur (me) as it does in her photos. I forgot to actually take photos, but you'll just have to take my word for it.

The recipe is super easy, and more importantly, super delicious! Please, for your own good- make this cake.

Happy summer friends!

update: I re-made this cake JUST so I had photographic evidence of how beautiful it is. Or just so that I have to eat it again. You decide.

Now that I look at it I should have squeezed one more slice in, but still a feast for the eyes!

A comedy of errors... AKA- Why I normally follow recipes!

Well hello there! It's been a while. I promise you I've been baking, but I always forget to take photos and my adventures have been rather uneventful- until last night. I've had two bananas ripening on my counter for about a week now, so last night was pretty much my last chance to use them in a recipe. Bakerella posted Blueberry Banana Muffin recipe a couple of weeks ago and I thought it sounded enticing so I've been kind of saving my two bananas to bake these delightful treats. Her blog makes them look SO perfect!

Everything started out just fine:


See? Just fine. Eggs, flour mixture, sugars, banana, buttermilk... Improvisation in baking is just not my strongest suit.

Her recipe calls for fresh blueberries, but I've been out of town and my fresh fruit selection is scant at best. I had some frozen blueberries- so I decided that any blueberries would do. It also calls for a cup of bananas smooshed up. Well my two bananas only made up 3/4 cup when smooshed, so I improvised with buttermilk for the remaining 1/4 cup. I really thought this would work! The strawberry bread (Make this bread. You will thank me. Oh, and make it withtwo cups of berries) I made last week was SO pretty. And SO delicious! And it had buttermilk- therefore, every quick bread must taste fine using buttermilk, right? That was my logic and I'm sticking to it.

So as I'm mixing, I'm just about to the last step, gently folding in the blueberries, and I look around to make sure I've gotten everything. I really did look, but apparently I have selective vision I missed the butter that was sitting in plain sight. After I folded in the blueberries (thanks to their frozen-ness, they made pretty purple swirls throughout the batter) and had the batter evenly distributed in the muffin cups, I realized my snafu. Well, poo. I proceeded to scoop the batter back into the mixing bowl once I decided that missing the butter completely would be worse than having completely purple batter. So I go the most gentle route possible and used a wooden spoon to "mix" in the butter. What a mess. The butter was not creamed and therefore never made it past the chunk phase. I did my best to at least distribute it through out the muffins, but it was a horrible result.

The muffins never even made it into my mouth. They felt game-y and tough (can quick breads be game-y???) so I didn't even try them. Unfortunately, because so many things went wrong, I can't even point out how to make this recipe usable, except to tell you to just do as Bakerella says. I'm sure she's right! :)