Weekend baking project. Mead and peach cake
A mead and peach cake to celebrate Midsummer, the days of light, abundance and harvest.
We’re close to Midsummer, the Summer Solstice, when we celebrated fertility, abundance, success. It’s the time to seize the opportunity and enjoy the moment, now that the days are endless and that the light steals precious hours to the night. This is the season of the massive old oak, warm colours, lavender, chamomile, rosemary and sage. In the Celtic rites, they consumed fresh fruits and vegetables, ale, mead and fruit juices.
Today’s weekend baking project dates back to 2012. I have been craving this cake for months, and finally I baked it. It was also the perfect occasion to bake it for Tommaso, for the first time. He appreciated the cake, and once more, he decided that the weekend cooking project is a brilliant idea, as he is finally tasting recipes that belong to the first years of blogging, before I met him.
Mead and peach cake
Today’s ritual mead and peach cake celebrates Midsummer, the days of light, abundance and harvest, and was inspired by the Celtic legends that have always fascinated me since the first fantasy books I’ve read, many summers ago, in that fresh bed in my grandmother’s house during one of those long summer afternoons of my childhood.
It’s a cake that would suit woods and forests, fairies and leprechauns, it’s crammed with fresh fruit, ripe peaches, lit by a drop of mead. Enjoy this beautiful summer, my friends!
Find the recipe for the mead and peach cake on the blog.
If you decide to take part in the weekend cooking project, share the results with us on social media by using the hashtag #myseasonaltable and tagging @julskitchen on Instagram. It will be a way to shorten the distance in this time of social distancing.
If you have questions about the ingredients or the recipe, if you have a special request for one of the next cooking projects, or if you just want to have a chat, just reply to this email.
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What you missed this month: wild fennel pesto tagliolini with shrimps, two recipes for an Italian aperitivo, torta salata with zucchini and ricotta, and zuccotto.
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June and Querceto di Castellina
As we announced in a previous newsletter, June will be dedicated to Italian recipes paired with the wines of our friends at Querceto di Castellina. We’ve visited their organic agriturismo and winery often during the past years, for candle-lit vineyard dinners, summer lunches, and Thanksgiving parties.
We’ll be sharing their recipes in our Monday newsletter.Â
If you subscribe to the Querceto newsletter, you will receive a 10% discount on your first online order. You will also be kept in the loop on all of the news and offers coming from Querceto di Castellina.
They also created a special offer for you!Â
A 6 bottle box with: 1 Igt Toscana Rosé Furtivo 2020, 1 Igt Toscana Bianco Livia 2019, 2 Chianti Classico DOCG L’aura 2018, 2 Chianti Classico DOCG Gran Selezione Sei 2017. The cost is 135€ instead of 150€ (shipping non included) + you will have the chance to enjoy a special 45 minute zoom tasting with Mary and Jacopo from Il Querceto.
Contact Mary at wineorders@querceto.com to purchase this special box, requesting for the Juls’ Kitchen special box.
Join our virtual cooking classes
We are missing the people we used to meet during our market tours and cooking classes. We had to figure out a new way to share our passion for food, to virtually meet all the food enthusiasts who gave us so much through the years. This is why we launched a virtual Tuscan cooking class on Udemy, an online learning platform.
We’ve been working on new courses and videos. Read more about the courses here on the blog to stay updated.
Virtual cooking courses currently available:
Each course includes:
step-by-step cooking demonstrations,
a PDF with ingredients, tools, and instructions of each recipe,
lifetime access,
free access to upcoming new recipes.