Late last week, I decided to do a little experiment. I asked AI to create a recipe for me. The original prompt that I wrote into the chat was: “Create a recipe for a cake that I can make this weekend that uses fruit that is in-season this time of year. I want the cake to be elegant with rich flavors and perhaps a flavor combination that is unexpected but still tastes excellent.”

Within moments, the chat filled up with a recipe for a Brown Butter Peach Cake. After some refining of what I was looking for in the recipe (type of cake, title of recipe, editing some ingredients), I was eventually satisfied with what the generator had assembled for me.

The original recipe can be found by clicking here. The formatting is my own.

The First Steps – Browning Butter and Roasting Peaches

The first step of the process was the make the brown butter. This was pretty straight forward, as I’ve done it many times before when I used to bake more regularly.

Next, I had to make the roasted peaches. I cut up four peaches and then tossed them in a bowl with brown sugar, rosemary, salt, black pepper, and melted butter. This was the first moment that gave me pause. (I’ll admit I didn’t really comprehend the ingredients as a whole when looking over the recipe.)

I wanted to make a sweet cake. Immediately rosemary and black pepper jumped out at me as savory ingredients. I found it odd that a sweet cake would want rosemary — especially since it’s such a strong flavor.

But still, I did what the recipe told me to do! For science! At least that’s what I told myself.

After a few minutes in the oven, the peaches started to smell wonderful and I immediately wanted to taste one. In the end, I gave the peaches a few more than the called for minutes in the oven. I guess my peaches weren’t quite as ripe as AI intended them to be. Once they cooled a bit, I tasted one. It was nice and warm — similar to a pie filling texture. But the rosemary was a bit much. The black pepper flavor wasn’t present at all.

Step Two – Cake Batter

It was now time to turn my attention to the main event: the cake batter!

As I was gathering up these ingredients as well, I started having similar thoughts: black pepper, rosemary — in cake?! This time I shrugged it off. The amounts listed were quite small and I didn’t expect them to overwhelm the cake’s flavor.

This cake recipe introduce me to an ingredient that I haven’t used before: almond flour.

This cake batter came together pretty quickly and I didn’t even need to haul out my GIANT stand mixer! I was able to bring everything together with a simple whisk. The first step was the cream the browned butter and sugar together. I probably over-mixed slightly because I wanted a light cake.

Then I combined the dry ingredients in a bowl. Next I added the wet to the dry and incorporated the milk in between the additions of the dry mixture.

When it all was said and done, I was surprised by the consistency of the cake batter. It was much thicker than I expected it to be. I knew that I was only make enough batter to fill one cake pan, but there just seemed something strange about it. Like it needed more air or something.

But, by this point, it was too late. I had to transfer the batter to the cake pan and bake it.

The baking was uneventful. The cake was done right at the minimum amount of baking time, according to the recipe.

Upon removing the cake from the pan, it stuck a bit. This gave me the opportunity to have a taste. It tasted good and very similar to a madeleine cookie.

Interesting…

Step 3 – Making the Frosting and Assembly

I decided to make the frosting and assemble the cake the next day. I wrapped the completely cooled cake in plastic wrap and left it on the counter overnight.

This frosting was billed as a mascarpone “cream.” So I was expecting not a ton of frosting. But I was wrong. The 8-oz tub was more than enough for the how I wished to decorate this cake. Even if I frosted the entire thing, there still would have been some left over.

The real problem with the frosting was the taste. The recipe had me add 3 tablespoons of powered sugar, some salt, vanilla, and some heavy cream. All of these things were needed to change the texture and flavor of the frosting. But, I felt that the frosting needed to be sweeter. Three tablespoons of powered sugar wasn’t really enough to make a difference in taste.

Once the cake was frosted, I placed some of the now-cold roasted peaches on top in a nice pattern.

Looking back on it, I think the rosemary on the peaches really ruins the look of this cake. This was another indication that maybe I didn’t need to use the rosemary at all. Or the black pepper for that matter.

In the photo at the left, my eye immediately goes to the green flecks of herb which makes me thing something is on the peaches that shouldn’t be there.

But alas, this is what the AI wanted. So it shall be what I give it.

Now, the time had come.

Tasting time!

The cake, frosting, and cold peaches together made for an interesting and slightly off-putting taste. Certain parts of it were tasty — and I do think that on their own, each major piece wasn’t bad.

The peaches should have been warmed before being added to the cake and thus the cake should then be served slightly warmed or room temperature. I feel like doing that would have improved the taste overall.

And as I already mentioned, the frosting needed to be sweeter, especially to counteract the strong savory flavor coming from the peaches. The black pepper and rosemary that was added to the cake, wasn’t prominent at all. It didn’t add anything to the end product.

As stated above, the cake ended up tasting like a large madeleine cookie. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing. If that’s what I was going for. But it wasn’t.

Final Thoughts

This AI created recipe definitely had some strong moments. The cake layer itself, despite it’s strange inclusions of black pepper and rosemary, didn’t taste bad. And I feel like with leaving those two things, out you wouldn’t have to change any other part of the cake recipe to make something useful.

As far as the frosting and roasted peaches go, that’s where most of the changes need to be made.

But for those changes, you’ll have to stay tuned!