A peach of a cake

On the first day of the last week of my summer holidays, it began to rain a silky, sultry slanted rain -- intoxicating background music for novel reading, a game of Scrabble, or ... baking!
I'd just finished an excellent novel and I can't find the Scrabble game, so I turned to the kitchen for baking inspiration.
And there it was, in a clay bowl filled with quickly over-ripening peaches begging to be rescued. Alas, the perfect accent for an afternoon peach coffee cake.
I pulled out The Loaves and Fishes Cookbook, which my former mother-in-law gifted me with 20 years ago. It's still my favourite cookbook.
I got to work on a basic, simple recipe, with -- sigh -- the addition of a couple of improvisations.
One of the things that makes me a good cook is that I improvise a lot. Unfortunately, it's also one of the things that makes me an iffy baker.
Thankfully, my peach cake improvisations worked this time.
I stuck to the core instructions for wet and dry ingredients.
In my electric mixer I creamed a half cup of unsalted butter, 1.5 cups of light brown sugar, 1 egg, and a teaspoon of Mexican vanilla.
In a separate bowl, I combined 1 cup of milk with a tablespoon of lemon juice then slowly poured the curdled mixture into the creamed butter as the electric mixer whirled on.
In another bowl I'd mixed 2 cups of unbleached white flour with a teaspoon of baking soda and (improvisation #1) about half a teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg. If you've never tasted nutmeg that's been freshly grated, I would argue you haven't tasted true nutmeg. That stale powdered variety in the grocery store is a pale imitation (tantamount to substituting Dream Whip for real whipping cream). Freshly grated nutmeg is peppery, and very grown up. I use it instead of cinnamon for most cooking and it was the replacement for a cinnamon/sugar topping in this recipe (I'm in no mood for sugary toppings).
My second improvisation may seem odd but I swear it works: I added a teaspoon of freshly crumbled dried thyme into the flour mixture, along with the grated nutmeg. Peaches and thyme are a smashing combination, and the herb addition made my peach cake more of a savoury delectable than sweet confection.
Slowly I added the flour mixture to the whirling cream base until everything was mixed.
I removed the mixer bowl then delicately folded in 1.5 cups of peeled and diced fresh peaches.
The recipe advises you to butter the bottom of a 9x13 inch baking pan but I'm a new convert to the Pampered Chef stoneware series, having recently been gifted with two round baking pans. The stoneware works magic on baked goods, acts like a pizza stone for homemade round pizzas, but also is good for roasting veggies or making oven-baked frittatas. They look good too.
So I buttered my 9x13 stoneware round, folded the batter into the pan, and let it bake to golden goodness for 35 minutes (the recipe book says 40-45 minutes).
By the time I sliced a healthy wedge onto my plate for a tea time snack, the rain had worn itself out and I still had four more days of holiday time to savour.