Peach Pecan Coffee Cake

ByDavid July 20, 2016April 12, 2021

This Peach Pecan Coffee Cake is so good it can double as dessert or breakfast…or both!

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I’m kinda particular about my peaches. I only like freestone peaches. More specifically, I only like southern freestone peaches. Ok, if you really put me to the test, I only like South Carolina freestone peaches. (A freestone peach is one where the pit, or stone, can be easily pulled out once the peach is sliced in half.) I recognize that I might be a little bit biased here, but you know what? It’s with good reason!

I spent my summers as a kid with my grandparents in upstate South Carolina, and my grandpa would “ride me down” to the peach orchard at least once a week to pick fresh peaches. And then we’d sit on the tailgate of his pickup truck and eat peaches. Another one of my favorite activities with grandpa was riding up to watch the trains. There was an Ingles grocery store right there in the center of Belton, SC, and we’d drive around back to the loading docks and watch the freight trains rumble by.

My grandpa was a town magistrate, and Belton is a small town. Consequently, that meant that my grandpa knew most everyone in town. Including one of the the local train conductors.

When he realized that I had such a fascination with trains, my grandfather arranged for me to ride in the engine of a freight train from Belton to the nearby town of Anderson (~15 miles). He followed along in the car and picked me up on the other side. I’m sure that taking a kid for a ride was illegal or at least highly frowned upon…but hey, it was an experience that I still remember! And the conductor gave me his hat…a hat which I still have to this day.

I’ve already been scouting out areas near our house where I can park and watch the freight trains go by. I’m totally taking Robbie up there once he gets old enough! I had a huge collection of wooden train tracks when I was a kid, and I’d spend hours building and then rebuilding train routes through the kitchen, down the hall and around the living room. (If I was lucky, I could get our family dog to take a nap, and I’d build the train route around him.)

My mom has been slowly bringing all of these tracks up to me each time she flies up to visit, so one day Robbie can turn my office (aka our basement) into his own train room. Also, on a side note, I find it incredibly ironic that I married an engineer who has worked on the design of freight engines. Ironic…or perhaps just fate?

I’m fascinated by freight trains, but enough train talk for now. Let’s go back to peaches…and pecans…and this Peach Pecan Coffee Cake. As you guys might know by now, I have a thing for coffee cake. As in, don’t get in between me and the coffee cake. I’ll push little old ladies out of the way to get to the last slice of coffee cake…and I won’t feel bad about it. (Ok, maybe I’ll feel a little bad…but I’ll still get that last slice.)

For this Peach Pecan Coffee Cake, I used my standard coffee cake base, but I folded some fresh peaches into the batter along with some of the crumb topping. This cake was perfect! Super moist thanks to the juicy peaches, but with a nice crunch from the toasted pecans. I made this one Friday afternoon with the thought of serving it for breakfast on the weekend. But we ended up having some friends over for dinner that night, and I served this Peach Pecan Coffee Cake as dessert. It worked both ways! Enjoy!