Start the season sweet with summer fruit kuchen.

Kuchen, German for cake, belongs to the family of cobblers, slumps, grunts, buckles, betties, and all those homey fruit and batter desserts with unlovely names. Here, the batter’s on the bottom, ripe seasonal fruit goes on the top, and you pop the whole thing into the oven, bing, bang, boom. There’s no sweet spice, no fancy liqueur, and no need for them. The flavor is pure summer fruit.

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Recipe Tips

Ripe is right here, even slightly overripe. This recipe is a great way to use up fruit that’s going soft.

Choose fresh, local fruit for optimal punch. What that means depends on where you live. Living in the tropics, I can’t imagine having an overabundance of cherries, but Michigan and Oregon friends tell me otherwise.

Rhubarb fans, I bet your pretty pink friend would shine here (rhubarb and almond — yum).

Btw, tart rhubarb is actually a vegetable.

I’ve made this kuchen with local beauties including

juicy red strawberries — Miami’s strawberry season is January
blueberries — antioxidant rich and sweet, in season here during spring and summer
mango — sweet, sticky, and truly summer
starfruit — a nice long season, starting in June and lasting into April
peaches — summer sweetness (okay from Georgia, so they’re only local-ish)

How do you feel about peach skin? I know some people have an aversion to the fuzz.

Do you know the easy way to slip the skin off a peach?

Drop your peaches in a large bowl, and pour boiling water over to cover. Wait a minute or two, use a large spoon to lift the fruit out of the water, then give a peach a pinch. The skin should start to slip right off.

If your peach is stubborn, spoon it back in its hot water bath, wait a few minutes, then try again.

Same trick works for tomatoes, and almonds, btw.

Watch me make summer fruit kuchen here with mangos and again with strawberries.

Whatever fruit — or vegetable — I’ve used, the kuchen rises to the occasion. It just doesn’t rise high. It’s plain and a little lacking in glamour, but Instagram isn’t everything. It’s plenty fruity and not at all fussy.

I leave the French patisserie stuff to pros like Carolina Molea of L’Artisane Bakery, Danielle Konya of Vegan Treats and Rouxbe’s vegan dessert maven, Fran Costigan. Summer fruit kuchen is sweet simplicity. It’s a cake you take to the beach, to a potluck, or into your back yard and eat with abandon right out of the pan. Enjoy as dessert, mid-afternoon pick-me-up, or Sunday brunch treat. Hey, fruit for breakfast, what could be bad?

If you don’t have almond flour or God forbid have a nut allergy, this works quite well using only all-purpose flour. Unbleached, of course.

How to make:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly oil an 8-inch cake pan.
Take out three medium-sized bowls without getting annoyed.
Pour chopped fruit into Bowl #1. Pour in half the brown sugar, reserving the remaining 1/3 cup for the cake batter. Stir together the fruit and sugar.
In Bowl #2, whisk together melted vegan butter, plant-based milk and remaining brown sugar. Stir briefly until sugar dissolves.
In Bowl #3, sift together unbleached all-purpose flour, almond flour and baking powder. Pour in the contents of Bowl #2. Stir lightly until batter is smooth and combined.
Pour batter into cake pan, spreading so it covers the bottom completely. Scatter fruit and their juice from Bowl #1 on top.
Bake for 25 minutes, or until cake smells mmmmm, like melted butter and jam, and top is golden, puffed and springs back when given a gentle poke.

Summer Fruit Kuchen

Adapted with gratitude from a recipe by Chocolate For Basil's Jerrelle Guy, author of Black Girl Baking.

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Servings 4

Ingredients

1/2 cup vegan butter melted and cooled slightly
1 cup fresh fruit sliced, crushed or chopped
2/3 cups brown sugar packed
1/2 cup plant-based milk of your choice — oat and almond are proven winners here
2/3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/3 cup almond flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly oil an 8-inch cake pan.
Take out three medium-sized bowls without getting annoyed.
Pour chopped fruit into Bowl #1. Pour in half the brown sugar, reserving the remaining 1/3 cup for the cake batter. Stir together the fruit and sugar.
In Bowl #2, whisk together melted vegan butter, plant-based milk and remaining brown
sugar. Stir briefly until sugar dissolves.
In Bowl #3, sift together unbleached all-purpose flour, almond flour and baking powder. Pour in the contents of Bowl #2. Stir lightly until batter is smooth and combined.
Pour batter into cake pan, spreading so it covers the the bottom completely. Scatter fruit and their juice from Bowl #1 on top.
Bake for 25 minutes, or until cake smells mmmmm, like melted butter and jam, and top is golden, puffed and springs back when given a gentle poke.

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