When I was 13 years old, I won a peach baking competition hosted by one of the local orchards down the mountain from my home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. It is a fifty minute drive down to the orchard. My family went on the weekends when I was a child to buy bushels of the seconds’ peaches. Bruised and misshapen, the seconds’ peaches were a hit or miss but cheaper and perfect for canning. We’d buy melons and corn besides and if we were lucky, my four siblings and I would all get a small ice cream cone at the counter in the back of the barn store.  My mom and I would soon begin canning the peaches before they spoiled. First we boiled the peaches to soften them, then doused the hot peaches in cold water to encourage the skin to separate from the fruit, and then quickly, quickly scoured the skin off each peach with our hands before the still-hot peaches burned our flesh. We filled mason jars with peach halves and covered them in a sugar syrup before canning. As the peaches soaked in the syrup, the mason jars turned peachy in color. In the winter we ate canned peaches, popping open a jar to cut into the cool slices with our spoons to taste a small hint of summer while the blizzards raged outside. But back to the baking competition. I used peaches from the orchard to bake a peach bundt cake that was peachy, fluffy, and soft topped with a lovely cinnamon sugar and glaze. We ate cake for weeks while I perfected the recipe, playing with the amount of greek yogurt and eggs and butter, and never wanted to see peach cake again by the time the competition rolled around. I have no photos of the cake for this was 10 years ago before my family had iPhones and the only photos we took were on a chunky Nikon DSLR camera my mother carried around with her. I was by far the youngest entrant in the baking competition and after seeing the spread of peach cakes up for judging baked by local women who had been baking for years, I felt the odds stacked against me. Yet I remember the mix of elation, disbelief, and shock that rocked through me when my name was announced as the first place winner. A possible moment that inspired my confidence and taught me the value of vision, dedication, and grace. With the prize money from the baking competition, I waffled back and forth on what to spend it on. $150 was more money than I had ever had. The number was written down on a little piece of paper redeemable at the orchard and seemed both enough and too little at the same time. I finally decided to buy plants because plants are forever and who doesn’t love flowers? I bought asters and two pink and white flowering hydrangeas and saved the leftover to buy ice creams at the ice cream counter in the back of the orchard barn shop. That bit of leftover change lasted for more ice creams than there was space on the paper to keep scratching out and writing down the new balance. The asters soon died in the kitchen garden patch, but the hydrangeas planted one on either side of the front door thrived. Ten years later the plants are bigger than ever and covered in a thick plethora of white blooms that tinge pink as they mature. Granted, we cannot hardly see outside of the two front windows now, but the bees and butterflies flock to the flowers and the sweet smell of honey perfumes the front lawn.  The hydrangeas are blooming. I stopped in at the peach orchard for the first time this summer and walked around the shambling old barn shop. I bought nectarines and asian pears and an oatmeal creme pie for the drive home. The peach bundt cake recipe is handwritten on a page in one of my old recipe books complete with all the noted modifications and smudges of butter and batter from the baking. It’s a tried and true recipe. An award-winning recipe. A recipe with a big heart scribbled in the margins to indicate it is a delicious cake. A cake that tastes like summer. You're currently a free subscriber to Letters By Layla. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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