Anne's Kitchen What's cooking?!

Yup, it’s time to crumble again! This time: a crumble cake, my very favourite way to use up summer fruit that’s going a bit wrinkly and soggy.

As you may know by now, I’m a cinnamon addict. There are really so many heavenly fruit/cinnamon combinations out there, but one truly unbeaten pairing is cinnamon with peaches and – wait for it – Amaretto! Yes, wack out the booze, soack your fruit in it and top it all with really buttery cinnamon crumble. Oh, and let’s not forget the base: a lovely pound cake sponge. Yum.

This is such a simple, yet impressive recipe. All you need is a bit of time to let the fruit soak up the alcohol, so that they take on that lovely marzipaney Amaretto flavour. Once that’s done it’s just a matter of throwing together two types of super simple doughs (your sponge base and crumble topping) and let your oven do the rest. Simple, brilliant, yummy and jaw-dropping. Just the way I like it!

In this post, I’d like to welcome three new members to my family… my prop family that is! Three rough and worn wooden boards have moved in with me, and I simply can’t get enough of them as backdrop for food photos. They’re just magical. I’ve used them in their pure and rough state so far, but I bought some sand paper to sand the back of them in order to paint them in new colours (so that I can alterate backdrops). Exciting times.

A big thanks goes out to the lovely guys from my local coffee shop, Vagabond, who sponsored these boards. They were in fact leftovers from their wooden tables that they crafted themselves, and with a simple question “oh, can I have them?”, I ended up carrying these three marvellous boards home. Really great: they get rid of their overmatter, I get hold of what I’ve been searching for for months… Yay!

Amaretto Peach Crumble Cake

Makes 1 cake (22 x 30 cm tin)

4 peaches
4 tbsp amaretto
185g butter
185g sugar
3 eggs
225g self-raising flour

For the crumble topping:
80g flour
80g demerara sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon
60g melted butter

Cut the peaches in half, remove the stone and cut into small chunks (roughly 2cm wide). Put into a bowl and mix with the amaretto. Cover and leave to rest for at least 1 hour, so that the peaches absorb the amaretto flavour.

Preheat the oven to 180° celsius fan.

Melt the butter and beat with the sugar. Add the eggs and beat until foamy. Incorporate the flour and beat until you have a smooth batter.

Line the baking tin with baking paper and butter the edges so that the cake doesn’t stick.

Pour the cake batter into the tin and spread evenly.

Prepare the crumble topping: Mix all the ingredients together until they resemble coarse breadcrumbs.

Distrbute the amaretto peaches over the cake batter, then top with crumble. If you prefer thick pieces of crumble, lightly press bits of dough in your hand before you crumble them on top of the peaches.

Bake the cake for about 55 minutes or until a wooden skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.