Peach, Pistachio and Lime Breakfast Cake

Peach, Pistachio and Lime Breakfast Cake is the perfect comfort food breakfast cake, gluten free and nutritious from nuts, yogurt and fresh fruit. Affiliate links have been used to link to items I am discussing.

I always feel awkward when something horrific happens around the world. As a writer of this blog, I mean. Ignoring it feels like ignoring the elephant in the room–or in my current hometown in this case. And maybe ignoring it seems extra hard this time precisely because it happened in my hometown, in a neighborhood I like to eat in, in a neighborhood near my husband’s workplace. Unlike a lot of recent tragedies (how awful that I can think of a lot of recent tragedies) I am not that removed from this one–one of John’s friends and co-workers even knew some of the victims and is involved with the Tree of Life Synagogue. But there are not any good segues between what is basically destruction literally wrought by evil and food. And I do not think anyone comes to this site to be more bogged down in the horrors of this world. A friend of mine from high school who blogs about life in general actually just wrote a great post expressing all of my feelings on this topic: Two Chais and a Mindy (she’s also a great writer so if you enjoy musing on life in general check her out). So with thoughts and hugs for those affected by the shooting last weekend and apologies for the cumbersome segue, time for some comfort food.

I found this Peach, Pistachio and Lime Breakfast Cake in Sabrina Ghayour’s Feasts: Middle Eastern Food to Savor & Share, which I also wrote about in Black Pepper and Pistachio Curry (and two is the limit folks–after that you have to just buy the book, which is absolutely worth every penny). Ghayour is rapidly becoming an auto-buy for me; indeed Sirocco: Fabulous Flavors from the Middle East just arrived in the mail and you know how much I loved Persiana: Recipes from the Middle East & beyond if you read about my Pot Roast with Persian Spices. Christmas is coming up–do yourself a favor and buy your cooking friends and family some Sabrina Ghayour books. I have fallen in love with all of them. They are the perfect combination of authentic, creative and accessible.

So about this specific Peach, Pistachio and Lime Breakfast Cake. You might as well know that in Ghayour’s world this is just a cake. But as comfort food to me it makes the perfect breakfast. You have protein in the yogurt and pistachios, it is gluten free, and includes fresh fruit. Obviously the perfect breakfast. Now I am sorry I took a while to share this with you–more in my next post about all of my crazy distractions–as you will need to pin it for next season if you live in North America because as far as I am concerned you must have local peaches for this cake. Peaches are on my local only list for buying fresh, along with berries, tomatoes and sweet corn.

But that’s why we love Pinterest, right?

We did not all agree about the yogurt topping. Obviously I am right and they are wrong, but my kids found it too tangy and preferred it without. I asked them if they would have liked a sweeter topping or no topping at all. The consensus was they liked it a lot without any topping but would be curious to try it sweeter. From my perspective the cake was plenty sweet on its own, and the lime juice in the tangy yogurt was perfect. You could also try it without the lime juice. You know you best, so I suggest tasting as you whisk (the topping) and just play until you like how it tastes.

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Peach, Pistachio and Lime Breakfast Cake

Closely adapted from Sabrina Ghayour. The original recipe calls for fine ground polenta--I could not find any plain polenta let alone a particular grind. The cornmeal selection was not great either. I finally settled for instant polenta, so I am calling for instant polenta as I cannot be sure if my recipe has enough liquid for non-instant.

Course: Breakfast, tea time

Cuisine: Cakes

Keyword: gluten-free, lime, peaches, pistachios, polenta

Ingredients

For the cake:

• 3 peaches (see instructions, should make 1 3/4 cups puree when done)
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 limes
• 2/3 cup instant polenta
• 1 1/2 cups (205 g) pistachios, finely blitzed in food processor (I used roasted and salted so I used unsalted butter)
• 2/3 cup butter, melted and cooled (salted if your pistachios are raw)

My topping:

• 4 ounces triple cream Icelandic vanilla yogurt*
• 2 tablespoons sour cream
• Juice of half a juicy lime
• 1 to 3 teaspoons spring honey** to taste
• lime zest (see instructions)
• peach slices, preferably with yellow flesh
• roughly chopped pistachios

Instructions

Make the cake:

1. Melt the butter and set it aside to cool.

2. Bring a deep pot of water to a boil and add the peaches. Simmer for about 25 minutes, until the peaches are soft. In the meantime, have a bath of ice water ready for the peaches.

3. Drain the peaches and then drop them into the prepared ice water bath.

4. Carefully slice the peaches to remove the pits and then place them in a blender. Puree until smooth.

5. You should have 1 3/4 cups of peach puree. Set it aside.

6. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease a 9-inch springform pan and then line the bottom with a circle cut out of parchment paper. Lightly grease the parchment paper as well and be sure the sides of the springform pan are extra well greased.

7. Beat the sugar and eggs together in a large bowl with a flat whisk. Zest the limes and reserve about a teaspoon of it for topping the cake. Whisk the rest of the zest into the sugar and eggs.

8. Switching to a silicone spatula, mix the blitzed pistachios and polenta into the eggs and sugar. Then fold the melted and cooled butter into the mixture. Last fold in the peach puree.

9. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 45-50 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center of the pan comes out clean.

10. Let the cake cool completely in the pan. Then use a slim knife to run along the edges of the cake to make sure it does not stick to the pan when you release the springform. 

11. If you think the entire cake will be eaten in one setting, feel free to garnish the entire cake at once. But for us it made more sense to garnish individual slices. Some of us preferred the cake plain and some of us (me!) adored it with the tangy garnish. 

12. Whisk together the first 5 ingredients of the topping. You can store this in the fridge in an airtight container and drizzle it over the cake whenever you want a slice. Then layer a few slices of a peach over the yogurt--white peaches were tastier this year in my neck of the woods, so I used them for the cake, but yellow peaches are so much more visually dramatic, so I used them for the topping. Sprinkle the whole thing with chopped pistachios. 

Recipe Notes

*I used an Icelandic yogurt because that is what I had. Most importantly, use a thick yogurt (either Greek or Icelandic most probably) that is whole fat.

**I recently discover local spring honey, the honey made from the flowers in the spring and could not believe how much more I loved it as compared to clover honey (which is what is usually sold in stores and is made in the summer). Obviously use any honey that tastes good to you. 

Looking for a Peach, Pistachio and Lime Breakfast Cake collage to pin?