Are they peach fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt cupcakes or tartes tatins pêches au yaourt?
As I inch (nanometer?) toward the end of my Ph.D. program, I have begun searching for job opportunities outside academia. As the academic job market shrinks, those of us trained in the teaching of literature seek hope in the classic maxim, “Those who can’t teach, do.”
Of course, spending the better part of a decade studying experimental literature doesn’t exactly prepare one to write popular novels. I can already imagine the conversations:
Me: You see, it’s an epic fantasy starring a modern hero. Lord of the Rings meets The Waste Land, if you will.
Editor: The main character just sits there while the villain destroys the world.
Me: Exactly.
Even were I capable of writing anything suitable for public consumption, there’s no guarantee that the public would consume it. These days, as publishing creeps ever closer to content farming, Basically Twilight, But With Chimps will outsell any novel worthy of the name. Give an unlimited texting plan to the trained chimp who authored that tale of simian simpering, and the gap in sales figures will only grow.
Writing, you see, is increasingly about self-promotion, and I am terrible at marketing. So inept am I at search engine optimization that the most frequent visitors to my wedding posts are fans of coprophagia. Not to stereotype, but I have a feeling that people with such pastimes are less likely to require wedding advice.
Food writing, too, is a game of liquid smoke* and mirrors, as whoever came up with the idea of naming various animal glands “sweetbreads” well knows. A successful menu writer can make a hamburger sound like it’s worth $10. A successful restaurant reviewer can make it sound like it’s worth waiting in a block-long line for a chance to order that hamburger. A successful food blogger, having waited in that line and paid that $10, can make the experience sound like it’s worth having yourself.
I am not a successful food blogger. That is why I named the following invention “Peach Fruit-on-the-Bottom Yogurt Cupcakes,” ensuring that you imagine them squirted into polyethylene containers and sold for twelve cents an ounce. Someone with marketing flair would have named them tartes tatins pêches au yaourt. Someone with a commercial bone in her body could have made you actually want to try these. Instead, I have taken something delicious and made it sound disgusting.
Enjoy.
Peach Fruit-on-the-Bottom Yogurt Cupcakes
Serves four.
For the topping:
- 1 peach, sliced
- 2 tablespoons butter, melted
- 3 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 pinch ginger powder
For the batter:
- remaining topping
- 2 tablespoons butter, melted
- 2 tablespoons white sugar
- 1 medium egg
- 2 tablespoons yogurt of a complementary flavor (if unsweetened, add a pinch more sugar)
- 1/2 cup white flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
1. Preheat oven to 350º. Mix 2 tablespoons melted butter, 3 tablespoons brown sugar, cinnamon, and ginger powder. Stir peaches in mixture until well coated.
2. Generously butter the bottoms and sides of four ramekins (7 oz ± 1 oz). Arrange peaches on bottoms.
3. To remaining topping, add the rest of the butter and sugar and mix well (the proper verb is “cream,” but that can be too easily confused with the noun). Mix in egg and yogurt. Add flour and baking powder and stir until of even consistency.
4. Add equal amounts of batter to each ramekin.
5. Bake for 20 minutes, rearranging halfway through.
You could serve these fresh out of the oven, cracked tops and all.
Or you could let them cool a few minutes and flip them onto a plate so that the caramel-hued glaze on the peaches glistens in the sunlight. You capitalist peon, you.
UPDATE: These are, by Dr. Unexploited’s estimation, 93% as good when baked in a microwave. I spread the peaches on the bottom of a glass loaf pan, pour the batter on top, and stick them in the microwave for about 4 minutes. The result is light, fluffy, and retro-futuristic!
Voilà! Instant marketing!
*I looked up the process for making liquid smoke, and it turns out we’ve been doing it accidentally. When my neighbors heat their houses with wood (This happens every time it dips below 65, because that’s “cold” in San Diego. So much for silicone being a great insulator), I use a dehumidifier to capture the asthma-inducing chemicals. I could have been bottling and selling it all this time. “Here’s all the crap I don’t want in my lungs. Put it in your food instead!”
