In season

This straight-up recipe starts with melting butter in the oven in the cake tin, then pouring the liquid butter into a bowl with a cup of flour, a cup of milk and a cup of sugar, plus a good amount of baking powder.

Once these ingredients are stirred together and scraped into the pan, a riot of summer fruit is dumped on top and the cake bakes into either a pudding-like form, warm and gooey, or a firmer cake with well-browned edges, entirely dependent on the amount of time it spends in the oven.

I use vanilla to further scent the cake, but my friend Gail has used almond extract. When I added cinnamon, I thought it overwhelmed the flavour of the fruit and the tang of the buttermilk, but another friend Abbie added nutmeg and was happy. Cardamom might be delicious, too.

This is your new go-to summer cake. Make it once, and I suspect you’ll make it again and again, as I have.

Buttermilk cake with peaches and blueberries

Ingredients

■ 226g unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus more for the pan

■ 3 cups flour

■ 1⁄2 teaspoon baking soda

■ 1⁄2 teaspoon kosher salt or fine sea salt

■ 2 cups sugar

■ 3 large eggs, at room temperature

■ 1⁄2 teaspoon vanilla extract

■ 1 cup well shaken buttermilk, preferably full-fat

■ 3 peeled, pitted peaches, sliced about 1cm thick (about 2 cups)

■ 1 cup blueberries

Method

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius. Line a 33cm-by-23cm slice tin with parchment paper so the two shorter sides overhang (for lifting the cake out of the pan.) Grease the paper with a little butter.

Whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt in a medium mixing bowl.

Combine the 226g of butter and the sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer; beat on medium speed, 3 to 4 minutes, until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Scrape down the bowl from time to time.

Add the vanilla extract to the buttermilk and stir to combine.

On low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and the buttermilk mixture in two or three additions, ending with the flour, mixing until just barely incorporated.

Use a flexible spatula to gently fold the batter a bit more by hand, making sure to scrape the bottom of the bowl to work in any residual dry ingredients.

Once the batter looks combined with no white streaks, scrape it into the prepared slice tin.

Smooth the top.

Arrange peach slices on the top and scatter the blueberries evenly over the peaches.

Bake (middle rack) for about 1 hour (start checking after 50 to 55 minutes), until the cake is golden brown on the edges and begins to pull away from the sides.

During the baking, the batter will puff up over the fruit; once the cake cools, it will deflate a bit.

Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely (in the pan).

Lift the cake using the parchment paper ends, then discard the paper and cut into 15 to 20 squares.