Melissa Lutz Blouin

I made peach cake today. I’ll share the recipe with you.

I’m also sharing an audio essay at the end of this piece. Although it was written at the start of the winter holidays many years ago, today baking remains a through-line in my life.

This morning I woke up to an overabundance of fresh, ripe peaches, so I found my battered red recipe box and pulled out a dog-eared, stained recipe card that features my grandmother’s handwriting.

Note: I recommend baking the peach cake at 400 degrees, even though there’s a side note that says 375.

The peach cake recipe extends way back in our family — it’s not entirely clear how far back, but at this point it goes back at least five generations. Aunt Mary says her mother, my grandmother, got it from my grandfather’s mother. Most of the kids in my generation grew up eating this magical, fruity cake. It’s delicious in the fall with the fresh apple crop.

But the peaches, with their short season and distinctive flavors, merit at least one use of the oven in the summertime. The fleeting fruit of summer tastes sweeter when you know it will soon be gone until next year.

I hope you enjoy the peach cake, as well as the short audio essay on baking, below, which first appeared on KUAF’s Ozarks at Large many years ago.