Blueberry Nectarine Cake

As the summer fruit reaches its peak and begins to pile up at farmers markets in Northern California we like to enjoy it on a daily basis so the other day when I went to the market I loaded up on blueberries and nectarines. They looked, smelled and tasted amazing. So when I was asked to bring dessert to a potluck picnic I thought of my impressive stash of fruit and found this recipe on a friendly site, My Recipes. Of course mine doesn't look anything like theirs! For one thing I didn't use a cake pan, whoops, didn't have one the right size so I improvised, always fun to do! I also passed on the cream cheese icing, I figure with two sticks of butter and a cup of sugar in the recipe who needs cream cheese icing?

The other thing that happens in Northern California this time of year is that the hills all around us start to get really dry, so dry we have a fire danger and the deer come down out of the hills for food and water. They eat almost everything in the yard. They eat the shrubs that Sunset's guide to gardening says they won't eat, go figure, the deer don't read so they don't know they're not suppose to eat those shrubs. They stand up and eat the leaves off the trees and even strip the bark off, they also like to just graze on the lawn. So the other day when I was driving to the farmers market which is how I got on this story in the first place! I came around the corner and a tiny spotted fawn was standing right in the middle of the street, I had plenty of time to stop but as I was braking out of the corner of my eye I saw the mommy deer standing next to the side of the road and she was S-T-A-R-I-N-G- M-E- D-O-W-N, big time, like don't even think about hitting my baby who just ran away and is now standing in the road staring at both of us. It started me thinking about being a mommy deer, what do you do when your baby runs into the street, I mean you are at a severe disadvantage having four legs and no arms to grab the baby. What is she suppose to do? Fling herself on top of the fawn or cry out in deer language STOP! I don't know, it's incredible that there are so many deer and that more little ones are not hit by cars. I know that was random but it's something that I was thinking about. Anyway I snapped a few pictures of this wonderful fresh fruit filled cake so you could get more of an idea about it and see if it might be something you would like to make yourself. It's a simple recipe, it starts by making a sturdy batter to which you add chopped nectarines and blueberries.



You add the fruit to the batter and mix it all together, this is a very forgiving mixture of batter and fruit which I think you could bake in just about whatever you have on hand, like a big stainless frying pan or whatever!





You only get two bowls sticky, the third one is just used for the dry ingredients. So, it's fairly easy clean up.

I put the mixture in the pan, smoothed down the top and baked it for about 35 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

And voila, it's finished, let it cool for awhile and cut into slices, good luck getting the first slice out in one piece!


Please click on the above link for the recipe, if you make it the fancy way with the cream cheese frosting please send me a photo, I would love to see it!