Reading, peach cake and tea.

Is it wrong to eat cake for breakfast?  Breakfast for the last 2 days has been just that, a piece of Upside down Peach Cake, I figure it's no worse than eating muffins.

My morning has been spent in the old, not very comfortable recliner by the front window, reading A Year in the Valley by Jackie French.  It's so good I can barely bring myself to put it down.  This morning I got comfy (somewhat that is), book in hand, peach cake on the table on one side and tea.... tea?  Oh yeah tea sitting on the kitchen table.  The recliner isn't the easiest thing for me to climb out of, it just happens to be in the best morning reading spot.  Then I dripped it across the carpet in my eagerness to get back.

The wonderful and lovely Jackie French.

 

I sat and read for about an hour and a half, longer than I was going to but the book is so good.  Now my mid section is achey, the chair does that, husband won't get rid of it, he loves it.  Ugly old, ratty thing it is, he brought it home from work one day when it was being thrown out.  Nothing was wrong with it, just they don't keep furniture that the residents leave behind after they move on.  Move on sounds so much better than die, he worked in an aged care facility then.  If the family doesn't take the pieces they get thrown out, we even got a mattress this way, wasn't  even used, had been in storage for 5 years because they couldn't use it on the hospital style beds.  Best quality mattress I've ever seen.  He now works at a local RSL that has it's own resort, perhaps we will get better quality furniture when they update.  According to him they update all the time, even updating things that have just been updated. 

I made peach jam on Wednesday, along with the afore mentioned peach upside down cake.  I've only made jam a couple of times before and each time I am in amazement at how long it takes.  As it is the jam looks a little to liquidy in the jars but if the flavour of the still warm jam left in the pot is anything to go by it will be delicious.  Might make some scones later.

 The jam recipe is Jackie's she included it in her book.  The book is basically a journal kept over a year and with added recipes. 

The upside down cake was a bit of a cheat, had intentions to make it from scratch but needed butter so went to buy some, saw a pack of butter cake mix and thought why not.  My excuse was that I was exhausted from all that jam stirring and still had to clean the sticky mess that was my kitchen.  Cake fell apart as I was plating it, looked ugly but mmm mmm, tastes wonderful.

The cake was just a few peeled and chopped peaches, laid down on a bed of brown sugar (1/2 cup) with cake batter poured over the top.  Baked in 180 C oven for 40 - 50 minutes.  Goes well with cream and I suspect custard.  Put the peaches and sugar in right before you pour the batter in, if you decide to make that part ahead of time and put it in the fridge while you go to the grocery shop, it will draw the juices from the peaches and will be very liquid.  No harm done but you really want that happen while the cake is cooking.