Plum-Blueberry Upside Down Cake

As I was browsing for recipe books in our local bookstore, I stumbled upon a copy of David Lebovitz's  book, Ready For Desserts.  I'm not at all familiar with any of his recipes but I have seen his name mentioned a number of times here in the food blogosphere.  So out of curiosity, I bought the book even though the front cover was slightly damaged from which I thankfully got a small discount :-)  I also decided to buy it because this book has a recipe for Marjolaine cake (which I really, really love) as well as a good variety of desserts that make use of fruits that were once rarities over here such as persimmon, blackberries, and passionfruit.  

all the blueberries are under the plums

Since I had plums and blueberries on hand and was craving something sweet yet uncomplicated, I decided to make his Plum-Blueberry Upside-Down Cake which I know is very easy to make.  It's even made easier as the recipe requires you to caramelize the butter and brown sugar in the pan itself then layer the fruits afterwards.  The cake itself is just a simple butter cake and the flavor and crumb reminds me of Rose Levy Beranbaum's base for her Pineapple Upside-Down cake even though hers contains sour cream while DL's has whole milk instead.  The consistency of the batter is also like RLB's and I felt like I made the batter using her 2 stage mixing instead of the creaming method.

Look at all the juices the cake soaked in!

It only took about 30 minutes for the cake to brown and cook and as I was about to invert it onto a cake plate, I realized that I had forgotten to butter the pan!  Thankfully, the sides didn't stick and the fruit topping remained intact.  There was some brown sugar that have hardened left sticking in the pan which I think can be remedied by using a baking stone (as suggested by RLB in her upside down cake recipes).  It slipped my mind to use it for this cake (but I did use her cake strips which worked like a charm!).

Moist, tender, velvet crumb...all the things I love about Upside-Down cake!

I love how the juices of the fruits were soaked in by the cake which made it even more melt-in-your-mouth good!  The blueberries were bursting with flavor and juices which is so unlike their almost bland uncooked selves LOL.  The plums still had a little crunch to them though which was slightly disappointing so maybe next time, I'll poach them a bit in simple syrup until they're soft yet still firm.