Peach buckle

Did I say that I was going to research brown bag lunch ideas? What I actually meant was, uh, dessert. More specifically, a buckle.



A buckle is a cake with a layer of fruit and streusel on top. I saw this recipe when I going through my google reader feed diligently doing important work-related research and immediately knew that I had to make it. I have buttermilk leftover from my recent cake adventure and stone fruits out the wazoo at the farmer's market (99 cents/pound for perfectly ripe and sweet peaches!). What more could I ask for?




This recipe also calls for brown butter, which was all the rage in the food blog world a few months ago. Much like the normal world, the foodie world has fads too. Aside from the brown butter phase, there was also the specialty salt phase where everyone was sprinkling fleur-de-sel on their desserts, the exotic condiments phase where harissa and Gochujang was showing up in random places, and many others.

Anyway, I've never made or used brown butter before and frankly, before this recipe I was a little skeptical about it. I mean, butter's great, but how much difference can burning it a little before adding it to stuff make? WRONG. This stuff is amazing. The difference between melted butter and brown butter is, in fact, astronomical. Brown butter smells like the essence of a good bakery minus the sugar and the spices. It's the smell I want to wake up to everyday.

Actually making it is pretty easy. All you have to do is melt some butter over medium low heat and wait for it to turn brown. The only catch is that once it turns brown it doesn't take too long for it to burn and turn black so you have to keep an eye on it. But you'll know once you have browned it sufficiently because once it does it smells completely different. Every website describes it as a "nutty" smell, which I thought was silly when I first read it because how can butter smell nutty? But that really is the best way to describe that smell. It's like the Maillard reaction of butter, if there is such a thing.

Melt the butter:


Keep watching it after it starts foaming (but frankly, you're melting butter and it smells fantastic. How can you not hover over it?):


Then suddenly, something magical happens and it starts to look like this:

(I think in my fear of making black butter I underbrowned it a little. But it was still delicious!)

Anyway, onto the actual dessert.



Add buttermilk, which has completely won me over as a cake ingredient, to the batter. It has the ability to make the cake incredibly fluffy and the cake batter really delicious, too!


See those little brown flecks in the batter?  That's the little burnt butter bits (I'm sure there's a real name to those things but in reality that's what they are) making the cake (and its batter!) extra good.




The final product. I think the streusel definitely makes the dessert. It's really hard to go wrong with little bits of flour+sugar+cinnamon+brown butter on top of your cake.