peach and vanilla cake with spiced almond milk

A few things I’ve picked up on, now that I spend all my time in San Francisco;

• You can never predict whether it will be warm, hot or chilly. Windy days aren’t too bad but they happen often.
• When it comes to food options, it’s rare that you can go wrong. The city has so many tasty options for different price points and for different diets. 
• It’s a dog-friendly city. 
• My life involves food, a lot of it. But I find it interesting that this city and the people here, are hugely, food centric. It comes up in a lot of conversations and rightly so.
• Food trends are innovative from both a culinary perspective and a technological one.

Since, I’ve been traveling a bit for the past few weeks (house hunting, work stuff, etc) and also avoiding the heat wave that’s hitting this side of the world, I’ve been focussing on easier and less time consuming items to cook at home. This desserts falls right into that category of easy-to-make, less time consuming and incorporates seasonal goodness in the form of ripe and sweet yellow peaches. I start by infusing Califia’s unsweetened almond milk with two types of cardamom, black and green along with crystallized ginger and a few threads of saffron. Once the infused almond milk is completely cooled and chilled, you can either drink it directly or you could make this super easy peach and cake trifle type dessert.

Peaches are one of the best gifts of summer and with a light vanilla flavored cake such as angel food cake or a pound cake, you will have the easiest and fruitiest dessert to serve your friends and family and one that requires very little effort!

Here are some of my kitchen tips when preparing this trifle that you might find useful,

• If you use the sweetened almond milk from Califia make sure you adjust your sweetener levels accordingly when preparing the milk. I suggest using sugar or honey but feel free to use your favorite sweetener.
• The amount of saffron I use to flavor the milk is a very tiny pinch and you will get a very tiny tinge of yellow color. Adding too much saffron can make this milk taste unpleasant. 
• I love yellow peaches because they are sweet and when ripe their texture is soft. You could use something firm like a white peach but I find that doesn’t play well with the texture against the cake.
• The cake: Here you can play around a little. I like angel food cake and vanilla pound cake to keep it simple. This way the spiced milk and peach flavors don’t get mellowed out by whatever might be in the cake. To kick things up a notch, you can also grill the pound cake or toast it a little before adding it to the dessert. 
• I like to leave the ginger behind in the milk when I serve the dessert but if that’s too intense then you can remove it.

peach and cake spiced almond milk trifle

yields: 4 servings

ingredients

3 cups Califia unsweetened almond milk

1/2 cup sugar or 1/4 cup honey

12 green cardamom pods, lightly crushed

2 black cardamom pods, lightly crushed

1/4 cup crystallized ginger, chopped

a pinch of saffron threads

4 yellow peaches, ripe

1/2 teaspoon lemon juice, fresh

3 cups vanilla pound cake/angel food cake, torn into bits or cubed

1. Place all the ingredients from the almond milk to the saffron in a thick bottomed saucepan. Heat on medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer and cook for 5 minutes. Remove from stove, transfer the milk with the spices into a container, cool to room temperature and then refrigerate for at least 6 hours or until chilled.
2. Peel the peaches and slice in half to remove the pit in the center of the fruit. Quarter the peach and then cut each quarter into half. Drizzle the lemon juice over the peach segments and allow to sit for 2 minutes at room temperature. 
3. When ready to serve, toss the peaches with the cake pieces carefully in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Divide this equally between 4 glasses or serving bowls. 
4. Remove the cardamom pods from the chilled almond milk and discard the pods. Shake the milk and pour over the cake and peach mixture in each glass. Add the leftover ginger bits from the milk on top of the cake. Serve chilled and immediately. 

Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by Califia and all opinions stated here are purely my own.