Tag: upside-down cake

“I am putting real plums into an imaginary cake.”
Mary McCarthy

Upside Down Plum Cake  … if you are like me, you’ve probably been fascinated with baking cakes for years. I have almost baked every upright cake that caught my fancy, innovating and playing along the way. Almost every cake but an upside down one. For some reason, it never did appeal to me. Until now …

It never caught my fancy because I believed most upside down cakes were pineapple upside down cakes. The colour play was never good enough to catch my attention. Besides, I have never come across a reasonably healthy upside cake that tempted me to pick up my pots and pans.It’s strange that you suddenly can’t get enough of a fruit when you get to the end of the season. What’s not to love about plums, least of all that they are one of the most nutritious fruits around. They are versatile. You could enjoy them endlessly in the raw form, toss them into salads, make crumbles and crisps, frozen yogurt, or maybe a plum lemonade. I’ve done all that.Then a few days ago when I looked at them, a voice in my head said plum upside-down cake. It was the day the baking bug seemed to have hit FB. Everyone was baking something … fig cakes, bread, all good stuff! I was  baking too {so what’s new}. That bowlful looked at me. How many could I possibly eat? Still obsessed with baking with fruit, here’s what I did …

I experimented a little here and there, and came up with this. Baking can be so rewarding. I used an all time favourite as a base recipe, the Buttermilk Pound Cake. The Upside Down Plum Cake  knocked my breath out when I flipped it upside down. Rustic pretty! Soft, moist, flavourful … some creme fraiche or low fat cream on the side. Better still, some good ole vanilla ice cream.

’twas delicious! Just what I hoped it would be. The luscious deeply coloured and baked plums won me over. They looked moorish, dripping fruit juices right back into the cake, moistening it with beautiful flavours.

The good thing is that while baking the plums release some delicious juices. Once baked, when you turn the cake upside down, these delicious plum juices moisten the warm cake making it heavenly. I’ve used plain flour, whole wheat flour and almond meal in my cake.