The other week a friend of mine was talking about a pineapple upside-down cake that she had made. I love pineapple upside-down cake, but my daughter is not a fan of pineapple. However, she loves apples. So I got out Wendy Hobson’s ‘Classic 1000 Cake & Bake Recipes’ and we made this:
Apple Upside-Down Cake
Topping ingredients:
2 dessert apples, cored and thinly sliced
75g soft brown sugar
3 tbsp raisins
2 tbsp lemon juice
Cake ingredients:
200g plain flour
50 caster sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of salt
120ml milk
50g apple pureé
5 tbsp oil
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla essence
Pre-heat the oven to 180 deg C. Mix topping ingredients and arrange in the base of a greased 9-inch cake tin. Try to fill the holes in the apples with the raisins. Mix together the dry cake ingredients. Lightly beat the egg, then, in a separate bowl, mix with the rest of the wet ingredients. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients, pour in the wets and mix until just blended. Spoon intothe tin and bake for 40 minutes, until the cake is shrinking away from side of tin. Leave to cool for 10 minutes before inverting onto a serving dish.
Variations
For one thing, you could replace the apples with a tin of pineapple slices 😉
You can replace the apple pureé with a different fruit — I may use raspberry pureé next time. You could also replace the raisins with another small ingredient which can fill the holes; perhaps a different dried fruit, glacé cherries or nuts.
What my toddler did
- Snacking on apple slices.
- Squeezing (some of) the lemon.
- Mixing topping ingredients.
- Arranging apples and raisins in the tin.
- Lots of mixing.
- Spooning (most of) the mixture into the tin.
The finished product
And my daughter’s verdict, after I had been so considerate of her dislike of pineapple? Well, she ate through the cake part eagerly, took one bite of the topping… and declared, ‘Eurgh, yucky!’
Oh well. Perhaps other toddlers will be more appreciative!
Baking with my Two-Year-Old 