Raspberry And Nectarine Upside-down Cake

Well, it's been a while, I tried to write a recipe for vanilla ice cream the other day but realised I hadn't made it quite right and I want to make sure it's a good recipe before I share it with you. I've been home for reading week and, in honour of my dad's flying visit back, we cooked a roast - for which I made pudding. It's a great dessert as it involves both cake and raspberries; these are a few of my favourite things (when the dogs bite, when the bee stings ... sorry, got carried away there!) and because you have to spoon it into a bowl it counts as pud, unlike a proper cake. Unfortunately for me I decided to make the cake part by hand and remembered how much easier it is when you have machines to do it for you. If you make your own cakes with the bowl and spoon method then I commend you - you obviously have better arm muscles than I do (maybe I should work mine more at the gym)!

Creaming thee butter and sugar

You can use either peaches or nectarines for the other part of the fruit, depending on what you can get in the supermarket. I prefer to use fresh fruit but so long as you drained them well I see no reason why you could use tinned fruit instead. Even if the cake looks cooked before the 40 minutes in the oven is up, don't take it out, like my one yesterday, it will still be liquid in the middle! Just put tin foil over the dish to stop the top from browning any more. I make mine in advance and reheat it in a low oven whilst we eat our main course, it saves on stress!

The finished batter

Raspberry And Nectarine Upsidedown Cake Recipe

Oven at 160˚C

Use a large, deep oven proof dish for this

You can change the amounts to 110g butter, sugar and flour with only 2 eggs if you want a smaller cake, cooking time will be pretty much the same, maybe 5 minutes less but not more

Ingredients

Punnet of raspberries

2-3 nectarines or peaches, roughly chopped into pieces

170g soft butter (if it's from the fridge put it in a bowl in the microwave for 15 seconds to soften it)

170g caster sugar (or change it to half sugar and half Agave Nectar if you want to keep the refined sugar down)
1tbsp sugar to sprinkle over the fruit

170g self-raising flour

3 eggs
Splash of milk

Vanilla extract, if you have any

Method
Place the sliced nectarines/peaches into the large dish so they cover the bottom in a single layer, pour the punnet of raspberries over the top and try to get them into one layer too.
Sprinkle the tbsp of sugar over the fruit and place in the oven to heat up (it helps stop the cake from being runny in the middle - I think it sort of cooks it from all sides if that makes any sense).
To make the cake you need to beat the sugar and softened butter in a mixing bowl until it's all mixed together and pale in colour - it'll also look sort of fluffy.
Next add the vanilla extract - a teaspoon will do - and one of the eggs and stir like crazy until your arm hurts and the egg still isn't incorporated. Stop, sigh and continue to mix, it will get there!
Repeat the mixing process with the other two eggs. Now, something went wrong with mine, and the mixture looked awful, really really nasty looking, but it didn't matter - when I put the flour in (do that now) everything came together, and it looked just like cake, so don't panic if yours does the same.
Having added the flour and made it look like cake batter, you need to add a splash of milk to help the cake stay moist - it's the very last bit of stirring you have to do, I promise!
Take the fruit out of the oven, try to leave a few raspberries in there, however delicious they may taste, and spoon the batter carefully over the top so that it's an even layer over the fruit.
Place the dish back in the oven (remember that the bowl is hot) and cook it for 40 minutes, no less! If the top looks very done part way through, put tinfoil over it and that should stop it from browning further.

Ready to put in the oven

Once it's done, leave it out of the way somewhere until the roast has cooked and put it back into a low oven (100˚C to 120˚C) whilst you eat your main. After you've cleared the table the pudding is ready to be served, custard or vanilla ice cream go well with it.

Do you normally have a pudding after your roast or are you too full? For us, this is the only meal of the week where we have a proper pud and not just fruit or yogurt.