The Für Elise Cake – A Sweet Cherry and White Peach Cake Dedicated to the Love of Great Moms

In June, thoughts for me turn to the long-awaited array of beautiful stone fruits that are coming into market.  It is also a month that I think a lot about my Mom whose 94th birthday will be on June 22nd and how she would have been in her own kitchen baking up a storm of peach pies and cherry pies and cakes.

Today, I have in my thoughts, a friend of mine, with whom I share many sentiments and passions, among them a love of nature and baking.  In addition, there is a Mom’s shared love for our 23+year-old sons who went to school together and with whom we experienced a most-precious memory of traveling to Rome to see them sing Father’s Day Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica and at Piazza del Popolo in 100F heat a few moons ago.  Today, as her Mom passed away after a long illness,  I got to thinking about how much I could relate to her feelings of profound loss.  Even though I was enamored of the lovely cool weather this morning and had a boatload of chores to do outside, I found myself coming inside and turning on the oven.   On days such as this, there is usually very little one can do to assuage the feelings of such deep loss that someone you know may be feeling.  But, as I did when I lost my Mom, in some small manner we can look for a way to commemorate something for them, as a gesture, however small.

The story behind the naming of this, a most-famous, if not “the” most-famous composition of Beethoven’s, Für Elise, is well known.  Today, it has been borrowed for my friend, in this time of loss and love for her precious Mom.

This is yet another iteration of a favorite cake I have adapted from one by Maja’s Kitchen.  Today, I bring forward two stone fruits of this late Spring season – Washington State Cherries and California White Peaches.  While I was most well-intentioned with the rainier cherries as a centerpiece, they did indeed fall into the cake before the structure developed properly.  As I reached the 1 hour mark of baking, I attempted to pull them back up to the surface.  While this didn’t finish exactly as I had intended, I was still pleased with the result.  As Ina Garten would say, “who wouldn’t want this for dessert?”

And so, you will have to de-stem the rainier cherries when you make this cake as described or put them on as a finishing element after the cake has cooled.  I will leave that up to you.

The Für Elise Cake – adapted from  Maja’s Kitchen

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, room temp

1 cup vanilla sugar

2 eggs

1/2 cup whole milk

zest of two lemons

1 tsp almond extract

2 white peaches, pits removed and sliced

1 cup fresh sweet cherries, pitted and halved

7  Rainier cherries, pitted and left whole with stems  

Preheat oven to 350F.  Butter and flour a 9″ springform pan.  Set aside.  

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg.  Set aside.  

In the bowl of your electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, blend butter and sugar on low speed.  Turn mixer to medium and beat for 3 minutes or until light and fluffy.  Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.  Add almond extract and lemon zest and blend.  Turn mixer to low.  Beginning with flour, add dry ingredients alternating with milk, ending with flour.  Stop mixer just when flour is just disappearing. Take bowl off mixer.  Add the sweet cherries and gently blend in with a rubber spatula.  Pour batter into prepared pan.  Smooth with a small offset spatula.  Arrange peach slices around outer edge.  Add the rainier cherries in the center.  Sprinkle with muscavado sugar.  

Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean.  The cake will have puffed up above the top of the cake pan.  This is the desired affect.   Remove the cake from the oven and let cool for 30 minutes.   If you can without ruining the top edge, run a sharp knife around the outer edge of the pan.  Carefully remove collar of pan and let cool completely.  Sift confectioner’s sugar over the top of cooled cake and serve alone or with a scoop of best vanilla ice cream.

Here are the results:

 

This post and this cake are dedicated to Elyse DeBona Descalzi and her lovely Mom on June 13, 2016.