Random Recipes: Upside-down Apricot Cake

There seems to have been a proliferation of upside down cakes in the blogosphere this week, I've seen at least four others! However, this recipe is my entry into the Random Recipes challenge hosted by Dom at Belleau Kitchen. This month's challenge was to select a book at random from the baking books you own and then flick through with your eyes closed and whatever recipe you land on, you bake! The book I selected was Gorgeous Cakes by Annie Bell.

This challenge suits me down to the ground as I would estimate that over 90% of my recipe books are baking related. So I had rather a large selection to choose from as you can see from the picture...and this is only a fraction of the books I own. I think many people would agree that buying recipe books is just as addictive as baking out of them!!!

Well it's fair to say that my previous two entries for Random Recipes have been somewhat challenging. I selected a Fruit Slice with Flaky Pastry in January and an Alice in Wonderland Teapot cake in March. So I thought when I picked an upside down cake this would be the easiest yet but to be honest I'm a little dubious about the outcome and therefore the recipe below has the modifications I would make.                                                               d                                                                                                                          

The first thing I have to say is NEVER believe a recipe for an upside down cake or similar which suggests using a loose bottom tin. I was slightly dubious about this to start with but who am I to argue with the recipe. Well I was right to be dubious...within minutes of putting my cake in the oven the juice and melted butter for the bottom of the tin leaked out of the base... leading to some serious oven cleaning once the cake came out. I think had it not been loose bottomed all that lovely syrup and sugar would have given a better caramelised top to the cake. Lakeland have actually started selling something called PushPans which are essentially loose bottomed but they have a seal round the bottom to prevent just this sort of thing. Has anyone tried them?

So what other modifications would I make. Well I used tinned apricots as the British apricot season is May to September, and they worked just fine. In addition to the cake the recipe also calls for a syrup to be made to pour over the cake once turned out. This consists of honey, water and lemon juice, half a lemon in fact. However, I found the taste of lemon in the syrup completely overwhelming, it basically obliterates the flavour of the apricots and the cake. So if I were to make this again I think I'd just put in a tablespoon of lemon juice or quite possibly none at all.

My final observation is that the cake seemed to brown up very quickly on the outside and take a lot longer on the inside. This could well have been something to do with my baking but I did put foil over the cake towards the end but also had to leave it around 5 minutes longer than stated in the recipe.

All this aside the general taste of the cake was good but I definitely preferred it with less of the overpowering syrup! The apricots were lovely and soft and the texture of the cake was light. This is my first upside down cake and I'd certainly like to try another one!

Recipe adapted from Gorgeous Cakes by Annie Bell:

Sauce

100g set honey
100ml water
1 teaspoon cornflour
1 teaspoon lemon juice (optional)

Apricots

30g light muscovado sugar
30g salted butter
12 tinned apricot halves if out of season, otherwise you can use fresh apricots

Cake

150g salted butter
150g golden caster sugar
2 medium eggs
Zest of 1 lemon
125ml whole milk
200g plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Start by making the honey syrup. Weigh out the honey in the saucepan and add the water (and lemon juice if using). Bring to the boil. Whilst waiting, measure out the cornflour into a small bowl. When the honey and water comes to the boil pour a small amount in with the cornflour and mix to a smooth paste. Then add this back into the saucepan and simmer for one minute or until slightly thickened. Set aside to cool, you could serve this on the side in a jug if you'd like.

Heat the oven to 200c/180c fan/gas 6 before creaming together the muscovado and butter for the apricots. This is then smeared around the base of a 20cm cake tin WITHOUT removeable base. Maybe try a push pan or if you try a fixed base pan let me know how you get on!! Then arrange the apricots on top of the butter/sugar mix with the cut side down. The original recipe suggests 10, I found that 12 fitted better.

Finally, make the cake mixture to cover the apricots. This is fairly easy, just cream together the sugar and butter before adding the eggs one at a time. At this point add the lemon zest. You can then sift the flour and baking powder into the bowl and add the milk. Give it a good mix before spooning over the aprictos and levelling the surface.

Bake for around 45-50 minutes, although it took me around 55 minutes. If the cake appears to be browning rather too much on the top just pop a bit of foil over it as you near the end of the cooking tim. When you remove the cake from the oven, leave it to cool in the pan for around 15 minutes but you can run a knife around the edge as it comes out.
To remove from the tin place a plate over the top of the cake tin and then invert the cake and it should come out onto your plate. To serve pour the honey syrup over the top of the cake. You could serve this warm or at room temperature. Warm with some ice cream might be good for dessert! :-)