Concord Grape & Peanut Butter Crumb Cake
Ingredients
for the cake:
- 3/4 cup light brown sugar
- 1/4 cup canola oil
- 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/3 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 1/4 cups flour
- pinch salt
- 1 cup halved and seeds removed Concord grapes we are using both the skin and pulp!
for the crumb topping:
- 4 tablespoons melted butter
- 2/3 cup flour
- 1 cup light brown sugar
- 1/2 cup lightly salted toasted peanuts
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350. Butter and flour a 8 X 8 inch pan. Set aside.
- In a large bowl or bowl of a stand mixer, mix together the brown sugar, oil, egg, milk, peanut butter and vanilla until smooth.
- Beat in baking soda, baking powder, flour and salt until a batter forms. Fold in grapes.
- Pour into prepared pan, set aside.
- In a medium bowl, stir together the topping ingredients (except the peanuts!) until it looks like wet, coarse sand. Fold in the peanuts. Sprinkle evenly over batter.
- Bake 45 minutes or until a thin knife inserted in the middle comes out with 1-2 moist crumbs.
- Cool completely on wire rack.
I was surprised to see Concord grapes at the farm store earlier this week. They are pretty fragile and only in season a brief time. My area is also not known for the grapes so it is very rare to see them for purchase.
Concord grapes are the grapiest grapes around. They are what is used to make grape jelly and grape juice and what a lot of Americans think of when they think about what the flavor grape is.
They are native slip skin grapes so while you can eat them out of hand, they are more popular to make things out of because skin slips right off when you bite into them and there are seeds. The flesh is very gelatinous. The most popular thing to make with them outside of juice or jelly is grape pie which involves peeling the grapes, cooking down the flesh and then seiving out the seeds. It’s a tasty pie but I knew there had to be a way to do slightly less work and still make something good.
The obvious choice seemed to pair it with peanut butter as a riff on the classic PB&J sandwich. I halved the grapes and the seeds were easily removed with the tip of my knife. Fair warning: the seeds could number from 1-4 and the size of the grape seemed to make no difference. The skin slipped off a bit but I just put in the same measuring cup as the pulp. You don’t want to leave it out because it has most of the flavor.
I wasn’t sure how the cake would turn out but it was amazing! Super moist and flavorful. The grapes really distributed themselves in the batter and their flavor stood up to the peanut butter. I resisted the urge to add spices and I was right, the peanuts and grapes was enough. The peanuts in the crumble was the perfect touch.