I made this cake for my plum-loving husband and my upsidedown cake-loving daughter, it was well-received!

For the fruit and caramel, I greased the pan (and a glass measure) with clarified butter, then made caramel in the microwave.  For the sugar in the caramel I used 25% of the weight of the fruit and added a little water.  Poured the caramel in the pan and when cool, arranged the plum slices on top.

For the cake, I used 30% of the Golden Almond Lemon wedding cake (6” + 9” batter), omitting the lemon oil and zest and adding a little almond extract instead.  It made a wonderful base for the fruit, but I think next time I’ll tweak it and use 20-25% of the recipe instead of 30% to get the right cake:fruit ratio.

One other thing I did that worked out well was to grind the nuts/sugar in the food processor, then continue with the processor for the rest of the batter, using the method for the plum-blueberry upsidedown cake in RHC.  It was very nice not to have to lug out and clean up after two appliances!  The cake was fairly dense, but for this I didn’t mind.

I used cassis to flavor it the whipped cream, which was a wonderful flavor with the baked plums.

What a lovely looking cake!  You have arranged the plums so neatly, very attractive, Julie.

Thanks so much for the kind words, Jeannette!

I like to leave the darker skins on the red plums because they bake up so beautifully (two-tone).

Your cakes are always so beautiful, Julie.  You arrange fruit like an artist!  Thanks for the tip of sugar to fruit for caramel and for the good suggestion of how much cake to use for a good fruit/cake ratio!

That sounds and looks sooooo delicicious.  I, too, am grateful for the caramel and fruit to cake ratio notes.

Thank you both!  Am planning a chocolate version of this with the little Italian prune plums, should be interesting…

Very nice cake Julie, don’t forget to show chocolate version too!

Excellent and expert job! It is beautiful and I bet it was delicious.

Julie - 23 August 2012 07:41 AM

Thank you both!  Am planning a chocolate version of this with the little Italian prune plums, should be interesting…

yes should be interesting….but gives me another idea

Your cake is beautiful Julie! We love upside down cakes too. I’ve got to try this before the season is over.

Thanks, everyone, for the compliments

This year’s chocolate version wasn’t as tasty or pretty as I had hoped.  My thinking with the chocolate versions has been to emulate some of the excellent french chocolates and chocolate cakes that use prunes as a flavor enhancer, but since prunes aren’t so popular here, I try to get some of that plum-iness from baked plums instead.  In past years, my most successful version has been made with red plums, caramel and moist choc genoise, allowing the plums to provide the syrup for the cake.  This year, I used the deep choc passion base, italian plums and caramel, but then went and added a little port syrup.  I think it was the port that didn’t work, flavor-wise.  And the Italian plums don’t bake up as prettily as the red ones.

Maybe im an amateur in cooking and still learning. But i also know how bad made food looks like and its not what i see on this two photos. Those details you explained are not visible and it looks very nice on the photo.