Erin Mann is baking a new cake every week for a year from the "All Cakes Considered" cookbook and shares her adventures here on AnnArbor.com. Read past columns here.

“All Cakes Considered” author, Melissa Gray, prefers using canned peaches in this week’s Peach Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to bake with some fresh, juicy summer peaches from the farmers market. Fresh or canned: Which is best? There’s only one way to settle this dilemma: a taste test.

Instead of one large cake baked in a tube pan, I baked two smaller cakes: one with a cup of canned peaches and the other with a cup of fresh peaches.

I purchased one quart of peaches from the farmers market and one can of Dole brand sliced peaches from the grocery store. I peeled, pitted and sliced the farmers market peaches and rinsed the liquid off the canned peaches and set aside until later.

The recipe calls for one cup of vegetable oil. I substituted applesauce for half the oil. I mixed up the batter and poured about half into another mixing bowl. I folded canned peaches into one batch of batter and repeated this step with the fresh peaches and the second bowl of batter.

After baking, the cakes looked identical. I marked the cooling racks so I’d be able to tell them apart. Once cooled, I frosted them with cream cheese frosting.

I ate a small slice of each of the cakes. Although I expected the fresh peaches to taste better, I think Melissa Gray was right about the canned peaches. The canned peaches had better flavor and a firmer texture in the cake. The fresh peaches were mushy, and their flavor was overpowered by the spices in the cake.

Try this cake with your peach of choice. "Happy Go Marni," a delightful baking blog, contains the recipe as well as step-by-step pictures.

Erin Mann is lover of all things cake and ruining diets one cake at a time. E-mail her with your baking wisdom at SheGotTheBeat@gmail.com or follow her on Twitter. Facebook users can also keep up-to-date with A CAKE A WEEK by joining the group.