The cake.
Upside down pear cake is simple to make, delicious to eat, and looks beautiful too, despite my crappy photography skills.
Slice up some pear. Or you could use apple, or pineapple, or just about any sort of fruit you want. I think it could work with lots of different types. I chose pear, and I ended up using only one large pear, but next time I think I would add more, to make a thicker upside down top. Slice it so that it is about 1/4 inch thick, give or take.
In a small pot, melt about 1/4 cup of unsalted butter, and once it is melted, add about 1/2 cup of brown sugar. Mix it all together. Add about a teaspoon or so of cinnamon and mix.
Pour about 1/3 of this mixture in your pan. I used a square pan, probably about 8 inches wide. I've never measured it. In future, a bigger one would probably better, as you shall soon see. Lay the pears down in an artful fashion over the sugar/butter mix, to cover the whole pan. Add a bunch of pecans or walnut and make it look pretty. I didn't measure the pecans, I just added until it looked right. Pour the rest of the sugar mixture over the top of the pears and pecans.
Set this aside while you make the cake batter. In your stand mixer, beat 3 eggs, a huge wodge of vanilla, 1.5 cups of cane sugar (or whatever kind of sugar you have) until fluffy and light. Add bits of butter, 1 chunk at a time, until you use 3/4 cup of unsalted butter. Probably it would be best to add totally room temperature butter with the sugar, then add the eggs, but I forgot to take the butter out of the freezer so had to do it this way. Either way, it worked handily. Once all the butter has been relatively incorporated, add a cup of sour cream. This is was makes the cake so FREAKING moist. In a separate bowl, mix together 2 and 1/4 cups flour, and take out 2-3 tablespoons of the flour, and replace it with and equal amount of cornstarch. I use organic cornstarch. Add 1 and 1/4 teaspoons of baking soda, 2 teaspoon of baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and sift it all together. In two batches, add it to the wet batter. Turn your machine on slowly and very briefly to incorporate the flour. Pulse it, in fact, unless you enjoy cleaning flour off your entire kitchen.
Shmear this batter over the pear mixture and bake in a 350 oven.
Cooking time depends on how big your pan is. If it is not huge, like mine, you will need to bake it for 50 minutes or so. Check it periodically. What you want is the centre to bounce back nicely. I started checking after 30 minutes, and initially you could see the centre was still liquid in the way it moved.
Lesson learned: Put a pan under this to catch all the drippings that bubble up and over. Unless you enjoy scrubbing the crap out of your oven afterwards WHICH I REALLY HATE TO DO.
I really hate the toxic fumes from things like Easy Off, so I googled how to naturally clean this mess. What I found was to spray white vinegar all over it, and then pour baking soda on it and let it sit. For a loooooong time. Then scrub.
Actually, with a little elbow grease it came off. Eventually.
Looks pretty good, no? So back to the cake. Once the centre no longer wobbles like a weeble, take it out of the oven and let it cool for about 10 minutes.
Once it has cooled, put a plate on top of it and flip it over. It should pop right out. If it doesn't, I don't know what to tell you, but it will probably still be delicious.
Holy. Amazing. Yumminess. I am DEFINITELY making this again. As soon as I no longer look pear shaped.
Please note for all the stupid people out there: I only cleaned the oven once the cake was completely done, and the oven had fully cooled. Thank you.
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