A Midsummer Day's Dream . . . Cream Cheese Nectarine Cake with Crumbly Streusel

Nectarines . . . really fine, really sweet nectarines. Not something one can necessarily count on finding here in Michigan. Usually, though, that doesn't matter. Why? Because typically, in mid-July, we're wallowing in a surplus of glorious local cherries, baking them into this and stirring them into that, not giving those pretty nectarines from out of state a second thought. But late winter weather played holy havoc with Michigan's cherry orchards this year, leaving us with the most pathetic harvest in decades. Trees that would normally be bending under the weight of crimson fruit look instead as if they've been ever so lightly dotted with red.  Just a cherry here, a cherry there. Sorry, folks--forget about "pickin' your own" and keep your fingers crossed for next year.

No home-grown cherries? For born and bred Michiganders that scenario is virtually unheard of. So, nothing left to do but rev up the contingency plans. Time to focus on nectarines instead, nectarines that hail inevitably from elsewhere. A sobering thought, no doubt. Miraculously, though, they're incredibly sweet and more than up to snuff. I've been shocked by their quality, thus I've been munching them the last few days with an unbridled sense of righteous privilege, like a koala in a eucalyptus tree. Don't try to stop me.

About this recipe . . . 

I adapted this from The Grand Central Baking Book, by Piper Davis and Ellen Jackson (I love this book, by the way, and recommend it). I started with their recipe for a cream cheese apple cake, but made some significant tweaks.

First, I reduced the overall size of the recipe by about one third, from one that would produce a large 12" bundt cake down to a reasonably sized 9" round cake made in springform pan. I used a relatively small amount of chopped ripe nectarines, unpeeled, in the batter versus a sizable portion of peeled apples. I added in a modest amount of almond flour/meal (if you can't find it in your usual grocery store, check at Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, or health food stores), which lends a subtle richness to the texture without adding any overt almond flavor. I upped the amount of vanilla, in fact using vanilla bean paste instead of extract, and I also fiddled with the proportion of cinnamon. 


The addition of a streusel topping worked out well, too; I just threw together flour, sugar, almond flour/meal, cold butter, and a pinch of fine sea salt and went at it with a pastry blender. You can count on a cake that happily straddles the fence between a coffee cake and a not-too-dense pound cake. A great cake overall, even without our beloved Michigan cherries.

Cream Cheese Nectarine Cake with Crumbly Streusel


(For a printable version of this recipe, click here!)

Yield: About 16 slices

For the cake:
2 and 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup almond flour/meal
1 teaspoon baking powder
2/3 teaspoon coarse kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2/3 cup unsalted butter, softened (that's one stick and about 2.5 tablespoons)
8 oz. cream cheese
2 cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs, room temperature
1 and 1/2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste (or vanilla extract)
1 extra-large ripe nectarine, unpeeled, pitted, and chopped into very small pieces

For the streusel:
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup almond meal/flour
1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
5 tablespoons of cold, unsalted butter, cut into small chunks
1 pinch fine-grain sea salt

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 9" springform pan.

Make the streusel first:

In a medium bowl, whisk together the sugar, almond meal/flour, and all purpose flour. Toss in the butter chunks and combine with a pastry blender or a fork until most of the mixture is in pieces approximately the size of a large pea. Cover the bowl and put it in the fridge.

To make the cake batter:

In a medium bowl, lightly whisk together the flour, almond flour/meal, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Set aside.

In the large bowl of your mixer, using the paddle attachment on medium-high speed, beat together the butter, cream cheese, and sugar until the mixture is fluffy and light in color (beat for at least five minutes and as long as eight). On low speed, add in all of the vanilla, and add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each one. Stop and scrape the bowl and paddle periodically.

Still on low speed, add in all of the nectarine pieces, beating just for a few seconds to combine, then add in all of the dry ingredients. Mix only until the flour looks completely incorporated. Scrape all the batter into your greased and floured cake pan. Sprinkle all of the streusel evenly over the top.

Bake the cake on the middle rack of the oven for about 55-65 minutes. You'll know it's done when the top is lightly golden, the sides are just beginning to pull away from the pan, the top of the cake doesn't jiggle at all when you move it, and a toothpick inserted in the center come out mostly dry. Check your cake after about 40 minutes and if it appears to be browning too fast, lay a piece of foil loosely over the top. Let the finished cake cool in its pan on a rack for at least 15 minutes, then run a thin knife around the sides, remove the springform carefully, and let the cake finish cooling on the rack.

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Fresh Sweet Cherry & Nectarine Upside-Down Cake . . . with Honey Whipped Cream

As a kid, the only upside-down cake I ever encountered was the classic pineapple ring and maraschino cherry model. I couldn't stand the stuff. As I recall, my dad adored it. He was the only one in the family who showed unfettered interest. Not even my mom, devoted dessert lover that she was, could bring herself to crave the canned-fruit laden cake. As a rule, it was atrociously sweet, sodden with that sugary syrup and just not an altogether great concept. She'd make it for him, of course, but the woman had her standards; given the choice, she would always have opted for a slice of something chocolate.

I guess it's no surprise, then, why I've never launched with abandon into the production of that sticky, inverted confection. Those pineapple cakes may be endearing in a retro sort of way, but not enough so to motivate me into actually baking one. No siree.

But this cherry and nectarine upside-down cake, on the other hand, while bearing some resemblance to that toothache-inspiring item of yesteryear, isn't as cloying. Made with thin slices of ripe nectarine, fresh sweet cherries, honey, plain yogurt, a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg, and a teeny tiny splash of peach schnapps thrown in to jazz things up, this baby's an improvement on that fusty old relic.

In fact, were the two cakes to pass on the street, I'd wager they'd acknowledge each other with a polite nod but, figuring they hadn't much in common, the pair wouldn't even stop to chat.

About this recipe . . .

Today's cake is adapted from a recipe in the gargantuan volume, Bon Appetit Desserts. It's a dream of a cookbook and, with 700+ pages, it's heavier than heck. Weighing in at 6.5 lbs., it's the size of a full-term newborn. They should sell it with a complementary stroller so readers can cart it around the house. Or, better yet, a forklift.

I customized the original recipe, which called for peaches along with a lot of spicy cardamom. What did I alter? In addition to using a combo of nectarines and cherries instead of peaches, I omitted the cardamom entirely, using just a little cinnamon and a scant pinch of nutmeg instead. I also added in a wee dab of peach schnapps, for a bit of zing, and I slightly increased the amount of salt (coarse kosher). Threw in the seeds of half a vanilla bean, and reduced the amount of granulated sugar in the cake by a small margin. In the honey whipped cream topping, I used less than half the amount of honey called for. (Have you ever mixed honey with heavy cream before? Fact is, you need a remarkably small amount to get the desired effect.)

With the adjustments, this cake is still sweet, but not ridiculously so. Some sweetness is just the nature of an upside-down cake. The flip-it-over-while-it's-still-really-hot concept wouldn't work without that gooey glaze permeating the top/bottom of the cake. In any case, if you want a concentrated sweetness infusion, an upside-down cake is definitely the ticket.

Fresh Sweet Cherry & Nectarine Upside-Down Cake 
with Honey Whipped Cream


(For a printable version of this recipe, click here!) 

Yield: One 9" one-layer cake

6 Tbsp. (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature (divided use)
1/4 honey (I used clover honey.)
1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 and 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
Scant 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 pinch ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp. baking soda
Scant 1/2 tsp. coarse kosher salt
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 egg, large
2 tsp. peach schnapps (optional)
seeds of half a vanilla bean (or, 1 tsp of vanilla extract)
1/2 cup plain whole-milk yogurt
2 medium size nectarines, pitted and thinly sliced in crescents (about 1/4" thick)
Approximately 16 fresh sweet cherries, pitted

For the honey whipped cream:
(Note: The original recipe suggested adding a little plain yogurt into this mixture. I didn't try that, but thought I'd mention it in case you'd like to give it a whirl!)
1 cup heavy cream, very cold
2 tsp. honey (Or use up to 2 Tbsp. if you want really sweet whipped cream.) 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and place rack in middle of oven. Liberally butter the bottom and sides of a 9" round cake pan. (After buttering, I took the extra step of lightly spraying the pan with vegetable oil spray; as far as I'm concerned, one can't be too careful where inverted cakes are concerned.)

In a medium size sauce pan, melt 2 Tbsp. of the unsalted butter. Add into that the brown sugar and the honey. Cook on medium high heat until the mixture begins to boil; stirring often, let boil for about 2 minutes or until the mixture begins to darken just a bit.

Remove the pan from the heat and immediately pour all of it into the buttered pan. Set the pan aside; the syrup will harden in the pan while you're preparing the rest of the cake.



 In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking soda, and kosher salt. In the bowl of your mixer, using the paddle attachment on medium high speed, combine the remaining butter and the granulated sugar until it looks somewhat fluffy. Beat the egg into this on medium speed, along with the vanilla been seeds, and the peach schnapps.

Pour in half the flour mixture on medium speed just until well blended; blend in all of the yogurt. Add in the remaining flour on low speed, just until blended.

Arrange the nectarine slices (you may not need to use them all) in a spiral design around the edge of the cake pan, over the hardened syrup. Arrange the cherries similarly in the middle of the nectarine spiral. Using a spoon, gently dollop the soft batter over the fruit, being wary not to disrupt the design. Smooth the top of the batter carefully to completely cover all of the fruit.

Bake the cake in the preheated oven for 35 to 40 minutes, or until the cake is golden and the sides begin to pull away from the sides of the pan.

Let the finished cake cool for only 5 minutes after removing it from the oven. At that point, have your serving platter ready and place it snuggly over the top of the cake.

Quickly invert the hot cake pan onto the platter and delicately lift the hot pan off. If all goes well, you'll be faced with a lovely fruit design atop a glistening cake. Let the cake cool before slicing.

To make the honey whipped cream: 

Whip the cream in your mixer on medium speed in a chilled bowl. Drizzle the honey in and whip until the cream forms soft peaks. Add more honey to taste, if you'd prefer the whipped cream to be sweeter. Keep refrigerated and serve over individual slices of the cake.

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