secret recipe club: vanilla peach bars

for this, my last and final secret recipe club choice, i first chose this upside down peach cake from amanda at dancing veggies. amanda's blog is full of vegetarian recipes and i had never made a cake without eggs before. but i had a different, major problem. the last few cakes i've made, i've thought they were done, taken them out of the oven, just to cut into them later to find them gooey inside. this time, my cake wasn't even close to being done. and just like the other times, i didn't know until after i had turned it out, let it cool, and took out the first slice. what a bummer. the two inches around the outside edge were cooked & delicious. my advice to those of you want to make it: make sure it's really done. and if you aren't sure, bake it another five minutes. oh, and let it cool in the pan about 15 minutes before turning it out.

caramelized peach ice cream

i absolutely adore peaches. they're up at the top, hanging out with fresh picked strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries, as my favorite fruit. heck, i love them so much i dedicated a week to them last year and two years ago i picked and canned twenty-something quarts of them and enjoyed peaches with yogurt for breakfast all through the dead of winter. i've shared other peach specific memories with you, but where there's one, there's always more.

peach gelee

these are not my mother's orange slices.

my mother loves orange slices. those sickeningly sweet, coated in sugar, chewy candies that look like cartoon orange slices. not every time, but most times, we went to the grocery store, my mom would buy a small bag of these. and she always opened them as soon as she got in the car, passing the bag around to my sister and i until our teeth couldn't take it. then they would end up closed with a clothes pin, stashed in the candy cupboard at home. i don't know what it was about those things, but mom loved them.

blackberry peach cake

this cake combines two of my absolute favorites: blackberries and peaches. blackberries make an appearance pretty frequently around here, so it's no surprise they're one of my favorites, but i have yet to profess my love of peaches.

classic peach pie

the first pie i made by myself - no help from mom or grandma - was almost exactly ten years ago. it was my second year of college and my friends and i had moved from the dorms into our on campus apartment. we, as i'm sure most college kids do, became our own mini family unit. we grocery shopped together. ate dinners together. bet quarters playing cards all night together and then went out for breakfast in the morning. and that year, before we went home to our own families, we had our own thanksgiving.

secret recipe club: butterscotch peach cake

this month, when selecting my secret recipe club recipe, i used the same method i always do - i start by going back as far as i can in the history. and then i look through the posts in the same month i am cooking from them. that way, i get the best of both worlds - reinvent an old recipe and cook something that fits in with the time of year. this month, i adapted katrina's banana caramel cake from baking and boys!

when i try a recipe and like it, it usually takes a good six months - if not longer - for me to make it again. even some of my favorites - chocolate chip cookies, soft pretzels, white layer cake with blackberry buttercream - i have yet to make again since the day they first appeared here. so it's really rare for me to make the same cake twice. but this cake? i made it twice in three days, a different way each time.