Guys Love Cooking weekend recipe: Upside-down peach cake (Torta rovesciata)

We love cakes, we love cakes a lot! In our blog we have experimented on a few in the last few months and we loved each one of them. However, the one we are writing about today is possibly one of our favorites. What we do like about it:

• Its ingredients: peach are a great fruit. Most 'summer' fruit is, but peach has the versatility factor
• Its colour: the deepness of the cooked peaches in the caramel is a joy for the eye too
• Its simplicity: this cake takes no time to make and the 'Return on Investment' is above expectation! ;)

Most of you would have eaten or heard about 'Tarte Tatin', i.e. the French cake that uses apples and it’s cooked upside down. This is essentially the same thing, it only uses peaches. There are countless versions of this great French cake (pineapple, cherries, berries etc.). Not long ago we did make our savoury version too. It seems that what the Tatin sisters created over 100 years ago has sparked a worldwide imagination.

The word ‘rovesciata’ in Italian means upside-down, it just sounds more exotic. Its preparation is very simple and does not require many steps . You can use either fresh peaches or in syrup, according to the season. We of course used fresh peaches. At the end you could sprinkle almond flakes to make the taste of the cake upside peaches even more sophisticated. In our version we did not use those.

Recipe

Prep Time: 20 minutes Cook Time: 50 minutes Total Time: 1 hour, 10 minutes Yield: 8-10 servings

Ingredients

• For the caramel: Brown sugar: 120 g (3/5 cup)
• Butter: 40 g (1.5 oz)
• Water: 1 tbsp
• For the cake: Peach: 400 g (15 oz), not too thinly sliced
• Flour: 200 g (0.9 pound)
• Butter: 140 g (5 oz), softened in room temperature
• Sugar: 130 g (4.6 oz)
• Egg: 2
• Milk: 120 ml (1/2 cup), warm
• Baking powder: 1 tbsp

Method

1. Pre-heat an oven in 180 C (350 F)
2. For the caramel: Place the ingredients in a small sauce pan and cook until it all melts, stir if necessary
3. Pour the prepared hot caramel sauce into a buttered-and-floured 22m (9 inches) tin, make sure the sauce is spread evenly
4. For the cake: Place each slice of the peach on top of the caramel layer
5. Beat softened butter and sugar using electric mixer until combined and lightened, add in the eggs and beat again, add the warm milk and then the flour, baking powder and mix until all combined
6. Pour the batter into the tin and spread evenly
7. Bake for 50 mins and then let cool completely in the tin
8. Remove the tin and turn upside-down the cake (use a knife or spatula to help if it's hard and sticky to remove the bottom part of the tin)

About Guyslovecooking.com:

We are Emanuele and Hoang. Emanuele is from Italy, Hoang from Vietnam. We have been living in Amsterdam for a few years and loving it!! We have never lost touch with our roots, and most importantly with our food. Our food is versatile, classic and it finds its roots across the world, We play with ingredients and we are not here to pretend we are the best cooks, but to remind us, and whoever wants to follow us, that cooking is fun, lots of fun. We hope you will enjoy our recipes. The purpose of guyslovecooking.com is to share our passion for the food we eat and for how we cook it. The recipes you’ll find here are both our own and also inspired from the world we live in, and from our past. guyslovecooking.com