you may also be wondering how my fruit wasn't rotten by friday if i bought it nearly a week beforehand. well my fine friends, let me go in to informercial-mode and tell you about these green bags. i have heard mixed reviews on whether they actually work or not, but for a college student who goes to the market weekly and just needs to keep fruits and veg fresh enough to eat for up to a week, these bags are great. i have had some problems in the past keeping tomatoes fresh until friday or saturday, as well as lettuces. but these bags do just enough to prolong their shelf-life and keep them from molding and me from practically throwing money in the garbage. this week when i got home from the market, i put my just under-ripe plums and nectarines in the bag and by the time i was ready to bake with them on friday, they were the perfect ripeness and none of them were even close to going bad. good investment if you ask me! (plus they were $4 for 20 reusable bags at CVS when i picked them up!)
but back to the dessert. you can follow the recipe in the link above for all of the ingredients and the step by step instructions, but i'll chronicle a few of them here. i gathered all of my supplies and headed over to a friend's place to bake. we started by making the caramel sauce (that is so very key to any upside-down cake) on the stove with butter, brown sugar, and honey. we cooked it on very low heat, to avoid burning the sugar, until everything was melty and delicious. here's what ours looked like:
we next made the cake batter (from scratch!) according to the and it turned out so soft and light. i would recommend this as a great yellow cake base for anyone who is looking to skip the boxed mix in the future when baking for a birthday party, etc (but obviously there is a time and a place for boxed baked goods-- i'm not knocking them at all!) the only thing that i will stress from the recipe is definitely to alternate adding the dry ingredients and the milk and stir slowly. it is a key step that doesn't seem like a huge deal, but dumping everything in at once and over-mixing can lead to a very tough cake (and no one likes that).
we set the batter aside briefly and turned our attention to the fruit. we washed the plums and nectarines, halved them, and removed the pits. since we had small plums, we cut up four into six wedges per plum and the nectarines into eight wedges (or just cut the fruit into slices that are big enough so that they won't disintegrate in the oven--this will depend on the size of your fruit!) we poured the caramel sauce in the bottom of a 9-inch baking pan and arranged the fruit in a nice fan pattern around the pan. observe:
lastly, we gently spooned the cake batter on top of the fruit (be careful not to drag the batter or you'll mess up your pretty design!) and smoothed it out into one nice layer.
our little cake went in the oven to bake for about 50 minutes (even though the recipe calls for an hour and five minutes, our oven was powerful and apparently speed-baked the cake) and we took it out to cool for ten minutes. once it was cool, we employed the "plate method" to flip our cake out:
--Step 1: Get a plate that is big enough to cover the entire cake pan and place it face-down on top of the cake
--Step 2: Use caution.. the cake pan is hot.
--Step 3: Grabbing the lip of the baking pan and the rim of your plate, carefully flip the cake pan over so that the plate is on the bottom (right side up)
--Step 4: Gingerly take the cake pan off the plate and marvel at your creation! (Hint: you may need to loosen the sides of the cake pan with a knife before you flip!)
voila! your cake is flipped and presented perfectly! keep in mind the cake will be a caramel color because of the deliciously drippy caramel sauce we made that is now the top of the cake.
serve wedges of warm cake with a dollop of fresh whipping cream or a little vanilla bean ice cream.
enjoy!
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