The Sweetest Way to Use Peaches and Plums Right Now

August in Italy means fruit stands overflowing with peaches and plums, and home kitchens turning that abundance into whatever's easiest before the fruit turns. Some of these desserts spend an hour in the oven building layers of custard and cream. Others go together in twenty minutes with sponge cake already baked. What connects them is the fruit itself — nothing here needs more than what's ripe on the counter this week.

Summer Cake with Whole Wheat Sponge Cake layers a nutty whole wheat sponge with a diplomat cream made from soy milk, then fills it with cherries and sliced peaches before finishing the top with peaches, plums, and more cherries. It's the one dessert on this list that uses all three stone fruits of the season at once.

Pro tip: bake the sponge a day ahead and keep it wrapped in the fridge — it makes assembling the layers far less rushed.

Peach Upside-Down Cake borrows its technique from tarte tatin, swapping the shortcrust for a soft egg-and-butter batter. Halved peaches go into caramel at the base of the pan, the batter goes on top, and the whole thing gets flipped the moment it comes out of the oven to reveal the fruit underneath.

Pro tip: unmold the cake immediately after baking — if the caramel cools first, it hardens and sticks to the pan.

Tart with Almond Custard, Chantilly, and Plums is the most demanding recipe here — a shortcrust shell filled with almond-and-marzipan custard, topped with a chantilly cream piped in a radial pattern, and finished with fresh plum slices and almonds. It takes real time, but the result looks like something from a pastry shop window.

Pro tip: keep the custard cold and in a piping bag before filling the shell — it spreads far more evenly than spooning it in.

Meringue Plum Tart bakes plum wedges into a soft, clafoutis-style custard set inside a whole wheat shortcrust, then tops the cooled tart with a glossy Italian meringue made from a hot sugar syrup whipped into egg whites. A few minutes under the broiler, or a pass with a kitchen torch, turns the peaks golden.

Pro tip: make sure the tart is completely cool before adding the meringue, otherwise the topping will slide instead of holding its shape.

Delicious Peach Cake splits a simple sponge cake into two discs, brushes both with the juice from macerated peaches, and fills the middle with a mascarpone-and-cream filling studded with diced fruit. It's the easiest recipe on this list, and the one that comes together fastest.

Pro tip: choose peaches that are properly ripe before macerating them — under-ripe fruit won't release enough juice to soak into the cake.

There's a version of this list for every week of August, because the fruit itself barely changes and the ways to use it never really run out. Whichever one comes first, save the rest for the next batch of peaches.