Peach Dump Cake

Dessert doesn’t get much easier than a dump cake. There’s no need to accumulate a pile of dishes and create a mess in the kitchen. True to its name, you literally just “dump” everything in a baking pan and pop it in the oven — although I like to think of it more as layering the ingredients and flavors.

Dump cakes can be made year-round because part of the magic comes from canned fruit. Here, I used sliced peaches packed in juice. At the grocery store, you’ll often find a variety of canned peaches — some in 100 percent juice, others in light syrup and some in heavy syrup. I like using the juice because it allows me to control the sweetness and flavors myself rather than relying on syrup.

After the first layer of peaches in the pan, it’s time to sweeten things up a bit. This is where I sprinkled some brown sugar on top, along with cinnamon (plus nutmeg if you’d like) and salt. You can feel free to get creative with the flavor combinations: Ground ginger, allspice, or cardamom are also delicious options. You can even add a layer of nuts at this point for some texture; chopped pecans add a flavor and crunch that’s always a delight.

Next comes the magic. All you have to do is open up a box of yellow cake mix and sprinkle it all over the surface of the peaches. It may seem strange not to make a batter first, but we promise it’ll work. Finally, every dump cake needs some butter to bring it all together.

Often you’ll see recipes call for melted butter to be drizzled over the top of the cake just before it goes in the oven. I have found that thinly slicing cold butter and placing it like little cobblestones all over the cake mix layer works wonders; it melts evenly in the oven and makes sure every little bit of cake mix gets the moisture it needs to bake up properly. Less than an hour later, you’ll open up the oven door to reveal an effortless dessert that’ll be devoured even faster than it is prepared.

While both are baked fruit desserts, a cobbler is topped with a batter or biscuit that is dropped on small rounds over the fruit, giving it the appearance of a cobbled road. Dump cakes are simply layered or “dumped” into the baking pan without the use of any other bowls.

You can tell a dump cake is done when the top is lightly browned and the fruit is bubbly.