Upside-down cakes are a great solution for how to avoid soft fruit sinking to the bottom of the cake: no worries, it’s already there!
What fruit for upside-down cakes?
The original fruit has been apples, ever since sisters Stéphanie and Caroline Tatin invented, accidentally it seems, the upside-down dessert. In general, it should be the type of fruit that can and needs to cook down and caramelise in butter prior to being covered with pastry or batter. And so tartes with pineapple, pear, plums and apricots are the most common.
But as it turns out, soft and more fragile fruit like berries works quite a treat, if without the long caramelisation in butter as I explain later.
How to prepare the dish or tin?
When I first made this cake, I followed Nigella Lawson’s recipe religiously, and it involved spreading a thick layer of butter over the bottom of the tin and covering it with a pound of sugar. It was delicious, but awfully soggy when inverted out of the tin. The blueberries almost turned into a compote and made the cake batter slightly too wet.
So the next time I cut down on the blueberries and tossed them in a little cornflour.
I left out the sugar and buttered the tin only sensibly, to allow for the cake release. A much better result and this is what is below.
It’s good to bake this cake in a pie dish, ideally see-through like Pyrex because then you can peek underneath and see if the sides and bottom of it are browning evenly. Or a silicone tin so there’s no worry of a leakage but the cake is released easily. But a small, 20 cm/8 inch cake tin will do too.
So lightly brush the bottom with butter, scatter the blueberries in an even layer and get onto the batter.
How to make the batter
It is very straightforward, but delicious too thanks to the polenta which gives a nice crunch to the texture.
You can use an electric mixer to beat the eggs with sugar, but I guess you could get away with a hand whisk too.
The original recipe uses orange zest and juice, but I swapped that for lemon zest and a little milk. I think lemon flavour goes better with blueberries and milk instead of citrus juice makes the batter smoother.
The milk and oil, groundnut or olive (but not extra virgin as the flavour would be too sharp in a cake, plus it’s expensive) are whisked in next.
And the dry ingredients, flour, polenta and raising agents, are whisked or beaten in at the end.
The batter, very runny, can now be poured over the blueberries.
And off it goes into the oven for about 35-40 minutes, until the cake pulls away from the sides and the bottom looks browned, if it’s feasible to assess that.
Right side up now
Let the cake cool in the tin or dish completely – not least because it’s actually much better on the following day.
Run a palette knife around the sides, as deeply as you can, then invert the cake onto a plate. You might have to give the tin a little pat to release the blueberry layer.
It will keep for another day, in the fridge if the weather is hot. You can dust it with icing sugar but the blueberries will immediately absorb it. A scoop of vanilla ice cream or a pile of whipped cream to serve with the cake though will be a thoroughly good idea.
More blueberry cake recipes
Blueberry and cream sponge cake is a magnificent dessert. Blueberry Victoria sponge, with layers of lightly roasted blueberries and whipped Chantilly cream is easy to make but very impressive to serve.
Blueberry, almond and lemon loaf cake by Ottolenghi with the sugar amount cut down a little by Cuisine Fiend. It’s still a masterpiece of a cake – all credit to Ottolenghi.
Blueberry poppy cake with poppy seeds in the sponge batter and the blueberries in a puddle in the middle of the cake. It is delicious warm or cold.
More upside-down cakes
Upside-down cherry cake with fresh cherries and buttery sponge, baked in a tart or flan case. That way the ratio of fruit to batter is more balanced!
Lemon ricotta upside-down strawberry cake made with wholemeal flour, zesty lemon and fresh strawberries. It has a moist, tender crumb from ricotta and olive oil, with jammy fruit on top after baking.
Apricot upside-down cake is an easy butter cake with fresh apricots and almond flakes. When it bakes upside down, the fruit never sinks to the bottom – it’s already there!