Peaches!

This year, all the stone fruits taste particularly wonderful, surely due to a hot & relatively dry weather during August. Apricots, plums, nectarines and yes, peaches... every one of them are plump, juicy and fill the mouth with deep sweet-tangy flavor.

My favorite sweets to bake in the summer is this Peach Crostata. Its crust can be prepared in 5 minutes. The best part is you can just press it against the baking dish and pop right into the oven. No need for resting and kneading and more resting like a regular pie dough. I clipped the recipe from the Daily News may many years ago (by Arthur Schwartz) and ever since it became almost a ritual to bake this dish, at least once, in summer.

So I grabbed the window of opportunity last week when the heat cooled a bit. It's fantastic as is, but adding a scoop of vanilla ice cream is the height of decadence. (And I should stop doing that... soon!)

Ku Cake