Apricot Upside-Down Cake

Summer fruit is my all-time favorite! My grandmother used to have an enormous apricot tree that gave the best-tasting apricots. Every year she would make jam, and my dad would make pie. A coworker of mine has some extra apricots, and I said I would make something if he brought them in. So, this is my version of a Better Homes and Garden Pineapple Upside Down Cake, using apricots. It was delicious-definitely a crowd-pleaser!
**The apricot recipe is enough for 2 upside-down cakes. You will need to double the cake recipe below if you want to make 2 cakes.

Apricots:
This was not a real recipe, but something I made remembering what apricot pie filling kind of tasted like. So this is what I came up with to use on the bottom of the cakes instead of canned apricots. I used about 2 pounds of apricots for this recipe, eye-balling how much I would need to cover 2 9-inch cake pans. If you only make one cake, you would obviously need fewer apricots. However, you could always save the rest of the cooked fruit for other things, like topping ice cream or cottage cheese.

1. Heat a large sauce pan over medium-high heat and add a couple pats of butter to melt. Chop the apricots into bite-size pieces and add to the pan.

2. Add a few tablespoons of brown sugar to the apricots, a couple dashes of ground cinnamon and some nutmeg or allspice. I like using fresh ground nutmeg because it smells so good and its fun to use the micro-planer (which will be featured on its own post one day).

3. Let the apricots simmer and cook away for about 10 minutes until they are soft.

4. Turn off the heat and let them cool a bit before adding them to the cake pan. To help them cool and drain, I poured them into a strainer over a bowl. Save some of the juice for the cake mixture.

Cake:
The parts that are in italics are the pieces of the recipe that I altered from the original. The rest of the recipe is taken from the Pineapple Upside-Down Cake recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook 75th Anniversary Edition, page 164. Some things have been left out of the original as well.

Oven: 350*F
Bake : 30 min
Makes: 1 9-inch cake or 8 servings

2 tbsp butter
1/3 c packed brown sugar
1 tbsp water
1 1/3 c all purpose flour
2/3 c granulated sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/8 salt
1/3 c milk
1/3 c juice from the apricots cooked beforehand
1/4 c butter, softened
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla


1. Melt the 2 tbsp butter in a 9-inch cake pan. Stir in the brown sugar and 1 tbsp water. Add in enough cooked apricots to cover the entire bottom of the pan. Set pan aside.

2. In a medium mixing bowl, stir together flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add milk, juice, 1/4 c butter, egg, and vanilla. Whisk together to combine or mix with an electric mixer. Spoon batter over fruit in the prepared pan so it is evenly distributed over the fruit.

3. Bake at 350* for 30-35 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted near center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Loosen cake from pan; invert (turn upside down) onto a plate or serving platter.