APPLE UPSIDE DOWN CAKE

My kitchen smells heavenly because I just baked a heavenly cake from Rose's Heavenly Cakes. The cake I baked is the Apple Upside Down Cake on page 9 of the book. I am a member of the Heavenly Cake Bakers and we are baking our way through Rose's book.

I decided to use Golden Delicious Apples which was one of the choices Rose gave. We were to peel, core and slice the apples and put them in a bowl with lemon juice and some brown sugar. They were to sit for at least 1/2 hour so they had time to release their juices. I let them sit for about an hour and only a few juices were at the bottom of the bowl. I decided to cook them a little so more juices would come out. It worked, and I drained the apples, added the juice to the pan with the butter and more brown sugar to make a caramel. Then I put the caramelized juices in the prepared pan and layered the apples over the caramel.

I put my baking stone into the oven and heated it up to 350 degrees while I made the cake batter. The batter was easy to make, using Rose's technique of adding the butter to the flour mixture, instead of creaming the butter first. I love cake batter, so in the name of research I took a spoonful of it. Yum!! The rest of the batter was plopped on the top of the apples and spread to even it out. I baked the cake right on top of the stone in a regular oven for 45 minutes. As soon as I took it out of the oven I inverted it onto the platter. I lifted off the cake pan and was left with a perfect cake. I put on the toasted walnuts, cut into it and ate the most heavenly piece of warm Apple Upside Down Cake.