Newsletter # 50 – Upside down plum cake
In newsletter # 4, I prepared the French bistro dessert, Tarte Tatin. It is a recipe that requires few ingredients, but the simple combination of caramelised apples and puff pastry is delicious. Turn the clock back 100 years, long before store bought frozen puff pastry was available and the average home cook was less inclined to prepare puff pastry.
Enter pineapple upside down cake. In the 1920’s canned pineapple was considered trendy and actually elegant following a mass advertising campaign and contest. By replacing the puff pastry of Tarte Tatin with a simple cake batter and the common apple with pineapple and the equally popular maraschino cherry you had a winner.
The base recipe for pineapple upside-down cake lends itself to a number of different fruits with plums being perfect. Other fresh fruits you could consider include peaches, nectarines, apricots and pears; however, they need to be ripe but still firm. Naturally canned fruit is always an alternative, but you can’t beat fresh fruit in season.
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Pre-heat your oven to 180c
- Assemble your ingredients
- Prepare your cake tin with melted butter
- Line your cake tin with baking paper
- Brush any remaining melted butter on the baking paper base
- Sprinkle with the brown sugar
- Split the plums and remove the seeds
- Arrange the plums, skin side down, on the brown sugar. Put the cake tin aside while you prepare the cake batter
- In your electric mixer, with paddle attachment, add the 125g butter, vanilla and caster sugar
- Mix these ingredients on medium speed until creamy – about 3 minutes
- Add the eggs one at a time. Allow to incorporate before adding the next egg. Clean the sides of the bowl with a spatula between eggs
- Mix the almond meal and flour together
- On low speed, mix in the flour and almond meal
- You will end up with a very thick cake batter.
- Carefully pour the batter over the plums. Gently cover the plums
- Bake in your oven for 45 -50 minutes – until the cake has a little ‘spring’ when pressed
- When cooked, remove from the oven and let stand for 15 – 20 minutes
- Turn the cake out onto a plate and carefully remove any baking paper if still attached
- Serve warm with ice cream or for afternoon tea with whipped cream
