Cranberries are the perfect fall fruit, at least as far as baked goods go. It is true that pumpkin and apple pies are wonderful, but the vibrant color of cranberries makes them look incredibly festive, not to mention that they add a lot of flavor to desserts, as well. Camille, the French food blogger from Cakes in the City, baked these perfect-looking cranberry upside down cakes. Getting a shot like this is quite a feat because, as most food blogger/photographers will tell you, red foods are usually the most difficult to photograph. To get back to the cake, the reason that this is called an upside down cake is that the berries are placed at the bottom of the pan and topped with the cake batter. Once it has baked, the cake is turned upside down to showcase the gorgeous cranberry layer. Camille added some gingerbread spices to the berries, as well as sugar and butter. The cake base is a light and tender buttermilk cake, which adds a mellow flavor that highlights and tempers the tartness of the berries.
If you can't read her recipe in French, you can try a slightly different variation found here or here.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-04-2006 @ 6:07PM
jess said...
an imperfect translation of the recipe
For the topping
300 g cranberries
130 g sugar
juice from 1/2 a lemon
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp gingerbread spice mix
30 g butter cut up into small pieces
For the batter
300 g of sugar
125 g of soft butter
4 unbeaten egg whites
450 g of flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 pinch of salt
250 ml of buttermilk (if you don’t have buttermilk, mix 125ml of unsweetened yogurt with 125 ml of milk).
Preheat the oven to 150oC.
Put the butter and sugar in a bowl and beat with an electric eggbeater until the mixture whitens. Add the egg whites one by one while continuing to beat the mix. In a second bowl, sift in the flower the leavening and the salt. Add the dry ingredients and buttermilk mix to the eggs/butter/sugar while continuing to mix.
Prepare the topping by mixing the cranberries, sugar, spices, lemon juice and berries together. Put this in an unbuttered pan and arrange the berries in a single layer. Strew the pieces of butter on the fruit.
Delicately spoon the batter to cover the cranberries. Cook for 20-25 minutes removing it as soon as the cake is done – cooking too long will make it less moist.
Let the cake rest for 3-4 minutes before attempting to remove it from the pan. Flip the pan onto the serving dish and wait a few minutes before removing the pan, otherwise the cranberries may decide to stick to the pan.
There you have it, a perfect autumn cake, at the same time acidic and spicy, everything that the original author likes!
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11-04-2006 @ 6:58PM
Spitzmaus said...
Wow, Jess, how terrific (and I sincerely doubt it's "an imperfect translation" of the recipe)!! I had the ingredients nailed down, but was stumbling over the instructions and was just getting ready to haul out my Larousse; now I don't have to, thanks to your efforts.
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11-05-2006 @ 8:47AM
Nicole Weston said...
Thanks for the translation, Jess!
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12-02-2006 @ 6:54PM
MJ said...
Gosh.....I cant wait to try this!!! Why did I not think of this?? Wonderful picture, and the color! WOW
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