Baltimore peach cake consists of sweet, fluffy dough covered with fresh peach slices and baked. It's coated in powdered sugar and, in some instances, a glazing of jam.

The cake is typically made in a rectangular pan and leavened with yeast rather than baking soda or powder, making it different from cakes in the American baking repertoire.

Yeasted cakes are a classic offering in German cuisine. If you compare Baltimore peach cake to Germany's Pfirsichkuchen ("peach cake"), you'll find them nearly identical.

The first time peach cake was ever mentioned in print was in a Baltimore Sun article in 1884 that compared it to German onion cake.

The peach cake almost certainly has its roots in Baltimore's German immigrant community of the late 19th century, but nobody knows exactly who deserves credit for it.

One reporter in the 1980s researched this problem and discovered everyone in the city assumed the cake had been around forever. It was considered a local icon by the mid-1900s.