caramel upside down cake recipe

Caramel Upside Down Cake

A fluffy vanilla cake topped with sticky caramel and soft. Fall is in the air, my friends!
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Ingredients

For the caramel:

  • ¼ cup butter
  • ⅔ cup brown sugar
  • 1 tbsp rum, optional

For the cake:

  • 3 regular sized apples
  • squeeze of lemon juice
  • 1 ⅓ cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • ½ tsp salt
  • ½ tsp fresh nutmeg
  • Laura uses ½ tsp orange zest, but I didn’t have any on hand
  • ½ cup butter at room temperature
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • ½ tsp vanilla extract
  • ½ cup milk

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 325 F or 160 C. Grease your baking pan with some butter.
  • Peel, slice, and core the apples. Drizzle atop some lemon juice (about 1 tsp) to prevent browning.
  • In a saucepan or skillet, combine all the ingredients to make the caramel over medium low heat and bring to a gentle boil, stirring constantly. Turn off the heat, and pour into prepared pan. If you want, you could bake the cake in the skillet you make the caramel in by repeating the same steps without transferring the caramel.
  • Place the apples in rows or spirals- or whatever onto the caramel. Use them all! You can never have too many apples (unless your pan is too small, in which case, use a taller pan!).
  • In a bowl, stir together the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder and salt.
  • In another bowl cream together the butter and sugar until well incorporated. Add in the eggs and vanilla, and beat yet again.
  • Add 1/2 of the milk and 1/2 of the flour. Mix only to combine.
  • Add the rest of the milk and flour, and give it a final stir. Make sure everything is incorporated well into the batter without over-mixing.
  • Evenly spread the batter on top of the apples.
  • Bake for 55-60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
  • Let the cake cool for 5 minutes, then run a knife through the edges of the pan. Place a plate on the top of the cake and flip it over. Tap the bottom of the pan to prevent sticking. The reason this should be done warm is so that the caramel doesn’t set too much and does not stick to the pan.
  • Serve warm with good quality ice cream. Sit back, relax and eat.
Author: Vedika
 

I started by peeling some apples…

Sliced them up, then squeezed a bit of lemon juice on top

to prevent too much browning. Then I set it aside.

 
In a saucepan over medium heat, I combined some butter and brown sugar
 
…and constantly mixed them together until they reached a boil.
At that point, I switched off the heat,
… and poured the mixture into a prepared baking pan greased with butter.
 
 
I lay the apples atop the caramel mixture.
 
 

You can never have too many apples!

 
In a bowl, I combined some flour, baking powder,
nutmeg, and of course, cinnamon and set it aside.
 

In another bowl, I creamed together some soft butter and sugar.

 
Then I added in some vanilla and cracked in the eggs.
 
Finally, I added some milk and flour- in two batches.
 
 
I scraped down the sides of the bowl to make sure
everything was incorporated.
 
 
I gently plopped it on top of the apple-caramel mixture
 
 
…and spread it out evenly. Into the oven it went.
 

The cake was golden in color from the top.

And well done, as you can see through my many testing holes!

 
I ran a knife through the edges of the cake and flipped it onto a plate.

I rhythmically beat the cake pan on it’s bottom

…and gently removed it. Out came Mr. Fabulous.

All that’s left is cutting a nice slice

and topping the warm cake off with some vanilla ice cream!

I served this to some friends after dinner.
 
 
Here are my two favorite Looney Toons 🙂
 
 
Recipe adapted from Laura Vitale – Click here or just scroll down below for my little nips and tweaks.
Want to continue the upside-down theme? Then check out my recipe for upside-down banana cake, or try baking my pineapple upside-down cake.