There are certain edible treats Baltimoreans come to expect during the summer—fried soft crabs, Silver Queen corn, icy cold snowballs with sticky marshmallow topping—but perhaps none is as anticipated by the sweet-toothed as peach cake. Mention peach cake to Baltimoreans (as I did at a party recently), and you'll get boasts of which local bakery makes the best or memories of peach cakes past ("Remember in the '60s," one enthusiast reminisced, "when you could get a slab of peach cake at Hergenroeder's on Hamilton Avenue for twenty-five cents, and when you picked off a peach, it left an indent in the cake?").

For the uninitiated, peach cake is a local treat bearing no resemblance to the iced layer cakes that mark birthday celebrations. Instead, try to imagine something like a rectangular peach pizza where, instead of tomatoes and cheese, you find sliced or quartered peaches and a sprinkling of sugar or brush of simple syrup on sweet raised dough. Come mid-July, when freestone peaches (peaches whose flesh separates easily from the pit, as opposed to stubborn cling peaches) are ripe and ready for harvest, glazed squares of peach cake appear behind the glass counters of Baltimore's historic bakeries, only to disappear toward mid-September when the peach season ends.

Like other local bakers, Sharon Hooper, owner of Hoehn's Bakery in Highlandtown, speculates that the origins of peach cake are most likely German, one of the culinary remnants of the city's early immigrant history. As we talk, we sit on the broad, immaculately scrubbed wooden work counter in the back of the bakery her grandfather, William Hoehn, a German immigrant, opened in 1927.

Hooper has made peach cake at Hoehn's for more than thirty years (and, for the last twenty, with the help of her cousin and business partner, Louis Sahlender). Using her grandfather's recipe for the sweet raised dough that is the base for peach cake as well as for doughnuts and buns, Hooper begins by measuring out the sugar, salt, and shortening into a well-used scale whose surface has the texture of dry elbows. Experience enables her to forgo the scale and freehand the amount of flour she needs for the dough (the amount varies based on the temperature or the amount of humidity in the air), which is then mixed in an ancient mixer. "Everything here but the pan washer is old," she jokes. "Up until last year we had a rotary telephone."

Hooper points to the counter on which we are sitting. "Louis rolls out the dough here," she says, and once it's rolled out, the dough is brushed with raspberry jam ("It adds color and keeps the peaches from sliding all over the place," Hooper explains.) and left to proof (rise). Then quartered peaches are placed gently on the dough, followed by a sprinkle of sugar, and the cake is ready to bake in the same massive brick oven Hooper's grandfather used.

When the cake is removed from the oven, Hooper sprinkles it with more granulated sugar and gives it a light wash of simple syrup to which a little orange pulp has been added. "And that's it," Hooper says with a grin. "There's nothing special about our peach cake," except that so few bakeries make it anymore.

But of the ones that do, including New System Bakery in Hampden and several in Northeast Baltimore, the same basic recipe prevails, with only a few variations. Other bakeries forgo the raspberry jam; Fenwick Bakery on Harford Road in Parkville uses brown sugar instead of granulated in the topping.Weber's Farm in northeastern Baltimore County peels and slices peaches from their own orchards and sprinkles them with cinnamon, while Gardenville's Woodlea Bakery tops off their cake with a peach glaze. But all bakers agree that the crucial ingredient to successful peach cake is local freestone peaches.

Sharon Hooper swears by the Red Havens and Lorings she buys from Bill Harris and Peggy Campanella of Harris Orchards in Lothian, Maryland. "You bite into one of [Harris'] peaches and the flavors are just so complex," she explains, "and they're dark red in the center, so they're really beautiful." Harris Orchards' peaches have won top prize at the Maryland State Fair for ten years. Harris credits the orchard's success with peaches to the excellent soil in southern Anne Arundel County, the great care he and his partner take in maintaining the trees, and the fact that when the peaches get to market they are literally right from the tree. "The peaches are pretty much picked the day before we sell," Harris explains. "We leave them on the trees until the very last minute. They are truly tree-ripened peaches." That ripeness is what leads to a perfect peach's velvety texture, he adds.

All that effort is appreciated by baker Sharon Hooper. "If the peach is hard, you can bake it 'til the cows come home, and it's still gonna be hard," she says. "If it's not a perfect peach, the cake's not going to taste right, and it's just not worth it."

—Mary K. Zajac is a regular contributor to Urbanite's "Food" department.



Recipe

You can only get Hoehn's signature peach cake at the bakery, but you can make a version of it at home. The following recipe was adapted by our recipe tester, Kerry Dunnington, from one published by Baltimore Gas & Electric in the 1984 book Treasured Recipes Honoring Maryland's 350th Anniversary.

If the thought of working with a yeast dough is too daunting, Fenwick Bakery sells sweet yeast dough for $2.75/pound. Please call the bakery  at 410-444-6410 to make sure the dough is available.


Peach Cake

1¾ cups white flour
¼ cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1 package (¼ ounce) active dry yeast
2 tablespoons butter, softened
½ cup hot water
1 egg, room temperature
1½–2 cups peaches (about 2 medium peaches), peeled and chopped
3 tablespoons sugar
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ cup apricot preserves

In a large bowl, combine ½ cup flour, sugar, salt and undissolved yeast. Add butter and beat for a few seconds on medium speed. Gradually add hot water, and beat for 2 minutes on medium speed, scraping sides of bowl. Add egg and ½ cup flour, and beat on high speed for 2 minutes, scraping sides of bowl. Stir in remaining ¾ cup flour. Lightly coat a 9-inch round pan with cooking spray, spread batter into pan. (Batter will be thick and sticky, but don't be concerned if you can't spread the batter evenly; the rising effect will evenly distribute batter.) Top batter with chopped peaches. In a small bowl, combine sugar and cinnamon, sprinkle over peaches. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm, draft-free place until double in bulk, about 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Bake cake for 25 minutes. In a small saucepan, heat preserves over low heat. Allow cake to cool for 10 minutes. Carefully transfer cake to a serving platter. Spoon apricot preserves evenly over cake. Serves 8.