Upside-down peach and passionfruit cake
I love upside-down cakes – you can use almost any fruit (stone fruit and pineapple work particularly well), and there’s always a little anticipation and excitement when you turn your cake out, no matter how many times you’ve made it before.
Ingredients
- 25 g melted butter
- ¼ cup brown or muscovado sugar
- peaches or nectarines 3 firm ripe peaches or 4-5 nectarines halved, stoned, sliced
- 100 g softened butter
- ½ cup brown sugar or honey I used creamed clover honey as it has a pretty neutral taste
- 2 lemons finely grated zest
- 3 free-range eggs at room temperature
- ½ cup plain flour or use gluten-free flour if required
- ½ cup almond meal/flour/ground almonds* see note below
- 1½ teaspoons baking powder check gluten-free if required
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice use one of the zested lemons above
To serve
- ¼ cup Passionfruit syrup* see note below, optional
- Yoghurt cream or vanilla ice cream
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 160degC. Line an 18-21cm spring-form cake tin with baking paper.
- Drizzle melted butter over the base of the lined cake tin and scatter over brown/muscovado sugar. Arrange peaches or nectarines on top in a circular pattern.
- In a medium-sized mixing bowl, cream butter, sugar or honey, and lemon zest until thick, fluffy and pale. Beat in eggs, one by one, making sure they are fully incorporated after each addition.
- Gently stir in flour, almond meal, baking powder and lemon juice until well incorporated and batter is smooth. However be careful not to over-mix.
- Pour batter on top of peaches and roughly smooth out the top. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until cake is light golden and springs back when lightly pressed in the centre.
- To plate cake, place a serving plate on top of the cake tin, then hold both plate and cake tin firmly together (use a tea towel so you don’t burn yourself), and carefully invert/ turn upside-down in one smooth motion – the cake will drop onto the plate. Release cake spring latch, remove sides and base of cake tin and peel off baking paper. Allow to cool for about 10 minutes before drizzling over Passionfruit syrup if using. Will keep in an airtight container for a few days in the fridge. Nice served warm or cold with yoghurt, cream or ice cream.
- *Make sure you use blanched almond meal/flour/ground almonds – this simply means the skins have been taken off before grinding and it will be white in colour. Whereas un-blanched almond meal/flour will have little flecks of brown in it as the almonds have been ground with the skins on.
- *You can buy passionfruit syrup (generally in the dessert section) or simply make your own by boiling ¼ cup fresh Passionfruit pulp (about 3 fresh passionfruit) with 1 tablespoon honey or sugar for 1-2 minutes in a small pot, or microwaving for a minute until hot and syrupy.
Notes
This cake can be made gluten-free (just use gluten-free flour or more ground almonds in place of the flour), refined sugar free if you use muscovado sugar and honey instead of the brown sugar and dairy-free if you use coconut oil instead of butter. If you do use honey, make sure you use a neutral (not too strongly flavoured) one, like the stuff that comes in the squeezy bottles or creamed clover honey.