Plum upside-down cake

I had this vision of making individual plum upside down cakes with a perfect half of a plum like a little jewel in each one. It mostly worked, but scaling a recipe from a full cake to mini-cakes is not as straightforward as I expected. That said, they turned out looking fairly nice, even if most of the plums didn't make it out of the pan initially and they are super tasty. I'm a big fan of cardamom and plums and I seriously ate like 4 of these. Or more, but really no one is counting.

So I used my little muffin tins, but it may be easier to use a normal 9" cake pan.  If you do, using parchment paper would probably help get the plums out.  I just didn't want to have to cut 12 little circles.

I just sliced the plums in half and put them skin side up, but this caused a bit of a problem getting them out because the skin came off and none of the batter was adhered to the plum so the plums got left behind.

I also clearly put too much batter in each, because I wanted them to be flat like cakes, not like upside down muffins.  But despite of all that, they turned out decently.  Next time I think I'll just make them as a giant cake.  But they were totally delicious and I would definitely recommend making them sometime.

Plum Upside-down Cake

15-18 small-medium plums such as Italian, quartered
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 eggs
1/2 cup orange juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1. Grease muffin tins (or 9" round tall cake pan). Sprinkle with brown sugar. Slice the plums and arrange in the bottom of the pan.
2. Cream butter and sugar in an electric mixer. Add eggs and vanilla and beat until smooth.
3. Add remaining ingredients and mix well.
4. Spoon cake over plums. Fill muffin tins 3/4 of the way full.
5. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 1 hour. Allow to cool for 10 minutes, loosen sides of cake and flip over onto a plate (or baking sheet for the muffin tin).

Recipe from Savory Sweet Life

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