Cake Recipes
Apple Upside-Down Cake
This moist, dense cake, crowned with sliced apples and dripping caramel, is decadently rich. Tangy, sweet, spicy, gooey, and super-duper scrumptious. For best results, spring for the boiled cider; this tasty syrup is the essence of apples. Use it in all your apple desserts, atop oatmeal or ice cream, or in yogurt or smoothies; it stays fresh forever in the fridge.
Prep: 25 to 35 min | Bake: 50 to 55 min | Yield: 8 to 10 servings
Ingredients
Topping
- 2 medium apples
- 4 tablespoons butter
- 3/4 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
- 2 tablespoons boiled cider or thawed apple juice concentrate
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 cup light corn syrup
Cake
- 3/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
- 2 tablespoons boiled cider or thawed apple juice concentrate
- 2 large eggs
- 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 1/2 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
- 1 large apple, peeled and finely chopped
- 3/4 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly grease a 9 inch round cake pan at least 2 inches deep. Line the bottom with parchment, and grease the parchment.
Topping
- Slice the top, including the stem, off one of the apples and set it aside before peeling and slicing the rest of the apples into 1/4-inch thick wedges.
- Place the apple top, stem side down, in the middle of the pan, and overlap the rest of the apple wedges in a ring around it.
- Prepare the topping by heating the butter, sugar, boiled cider, cinnamon, and corn syrup together over low heat, stirring until the sugar is dissolved.
- Pour 1/2 cup of the syrup mixture into the prepared pan, and set the rest aside.
Cake
- Beat the oil, brown sugar, boiled cider, eggs, spices, and salt together for 2 minutes at medium speed.
- Mix the flour with the baking soda, and stir it into the batter.
- Add the chopped apple and nuts, and mix until just blended.
- Drop scoops of the batter atop the apples in the pan, gently spreading to cover.
- Bake the cake for 50 to 55 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted near the center comes out clean.
- Remove the cake from the oven, and run a thin spatula around the edge to loosen.
- Let the cake cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then turn it out onto a serving plate, bottom side up. Scrape out any sauce that remains in the pan, and spread it over the cake.
- Reheat the reserved topping. If butter starts to separate as you reheat, add water by the teaspoon and stir until the butter rejoins the rest of the sauce.
- Pour the sauce over the cake.
- Serve cake warm or at room temperature, with whipped cream if desired.
Attribution
Recipe and photo used with permission from:
King Arthur Flour