Upside Down Plum Cake With Tangy, Gooey Caramel

Tune in for a performance later. [laughs]

[upbeat music]

Today I'm making my plum and lime upside-down cake.

I am not a chocolate girlie.

I said it. [chuckles]

I pick fruit desserts over chocolate desserts.

This cake hits all of the notes

that I look for in a dessert.

It's tangy, it's gooey,

it kind of gets your taste buds going.

I chose plums for this recipe

because limes can be so citrusy and plums are floral,

and I think these are two flavor profiles

that go really well together.

[upbeat music]

I'm gonna start by mixing my dry ingredients together.

This is all-purpose flour, some baking powder, and salt.

So just gonna mix that together

and that way you have no clumps,

that will give you a smooth batter.

I'm going to zest my limes directly into the sugar

and then use my hands to kind of like massage it in

and it kind of releases oils into the sugar

and that way the whole cake tastes more limey.

Mm. I don't know,

maybe I should put this in like bath salts

for a limey citrusy bath. [laughs]

I feel like that would work.

Now I'm gonna make the wet batter.

So I'm gonna start by creaming the sugar and butter together

until it's light and fluffy.

And it's important to have room temperature butter

because if it is too cold,

it is not going to kind of aerate well,

and you're gonna have these like coal little clumps

that don't mix with the sugar well.

[mixer whirring] The butter at this stage

is like really broken up into the sugar,

and I think now I'm gonna turn up the speed to high

[mixer whirring] and let that mix.

While that's happening, I'm gonna crack my eggs.

You need to make sure that your eggs are room temperature.

[mixer whirring] Okay.

As you can see, the butter and sugar

have mixed in really well together.

The consistency is nice and fluffy.

It's lighter than we first started,

which means I'm ready to add the eggs.

[mixer whirring] One by one.

Once the eggs are fully mixed in,

go ahead and add some vanilla.

I'm going to add about a teaspoon worth.

If you add some more, it's gonna be okay.

The batter is super light and fluffy.

The eggs are completely mixed in.

There's no little specs of yolk or egg whites

that you can see in here.

When that happens it means you're ready

to kind of add the dry ingredients.

[mixer whirring]

And be careful not to over beat this

because we don't want the gluten to like develop too much

because that's gonna make the cake tough.

I'm gonna add the milk.

The milk is gonna add more moisture

and help the cake batter mix them completely.

The cake batter is done when you see no dry specs of flour,

when you see that it's not broken anymore.

So just when you add the milk

you know it kind of separates a little bit,

but then it comes back together and becomes really smooth.

That's when you know

that you don't have to whisk it anymore.

See? This looks great.

It's honestly really delicious.

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I'm going to cut my plums now,

but we need to talk about the different varieties of plums.

So I prefer plums that are either red or pink

on the inside for this recipe.

Look at that.

So pretty.

They are a little bit more tart

and the texture can be quite firm.

So you don't wanna use plums that are super soft

like this one.

You can literally press the skin

and you can see that it's like all mushy.

This is gonna bake for an hour

and this is gonna fully just disintegrate.

Not pretty.

And then these plums are just regular red plums,

but they have a yellow inside.

Look at the difference.

You could use the yellow one,

but they're not as tart enough.

They're like a little bit less sweet,

but I feel like the best result you get

is when the plums are kind of like red on the inside.

I know we have extra, but I really wanna eat one.

Mm.

So good.

Let's get slicing.

You wanna make sure that the fruit is not too thinly sliced

because you're gonna pour over like a caramel on top,

it's gonna bake for an hour,

so you still wanna see the fruit once it's done baking.

We have our mound of plums.

I'm going to prepare my pan.

So make sure you get the butter

in every crevice and corner of this pan

because you know it's gonna be pretty like sticky

and caramely and I don't want any of this deliciousness

to like stick on the pan and burn.

Awesome. So I have a parchment round cut

going to place it in the bottom.

And then I'm gonna kind of rub some butter

on the top as well.

So I know this parchment is not going anywhere.

And then take all-purpose flour and just sprinkle it.

The flour's gonna make sure

that your cake doesn't stick to the sides.

That's how it should look.

You have flour in every corner of this cake pan.

So now I know for sure that my batter is not gonna stick

and the cake's gonna come out super easily.

And now just go ahead and arrange the plums

in a pretty little circle.

You can start from the center

or you can start from the outside,

as long as the plums are close together

and cover the entirety of this cake pan

you should be good to go.

You're gonna want a piece of plum

with every bite of your cake.

It's worth it.

Here you go.

Look at that art.

Okay, now I'm gonna make the lime caramel

which is frankly one of the best parts of this recipe.

[upbeat music]

The hardest part about making this caramel

is not touching it.

So I have a little bit of sugar, sprinkle the water,

and right after the water I'm gonna sprinkle

some salt in here.

You want the heat to be medium high.

Once you have the sugar and water in the pot

do not touch it because if you do

there's gonna be some like hot crystals on the side

and that's not what I want in the caramel.

You want it to be really like smooth and melted,

and all of the sugar crystals to be like fully caramelized.

So when those bubbles kind of reach to the center

that's how I know I'm ready to add the lime juice.

And let the magic happen.

Now I'm waiting for the sugar to start turning colors.

So don't stir it,

but at this stage when it starts to get really foamy

you can like gently like move the foam bubbles to the side

to see what's happening at the bottom.

You can see like the sugar is like light,

kind of a honey golden right now,

so this means we're close.

I'm gonna turn this down because I don't want this to burn.

So this is your cue.

The color is now kind of like a light golden

and in the next 10 seconds

it's going to get a couple of shades darker,

which means it's just slightly more caramelized

and that is perfect.

You don't have a lot of time between now

and pouring it over to the plum,

so let's go back to the station.

Look how pretty.

It's not burnt, it's just like that.

It's like golden hour. [chuckles]

It is super important to pour it rather quickly

because as the caramel sits, it's going to harden up.

You don't have like a big window.

So just make sure you get all of the plums covered.

The caramel is going to hold the fruit in place,

it's going to make it juicier, caramely,

and like really sticky and gooey.

Okay, I'm tempted.

It's hot.

Mm, mm, mm.

It's the perfect combination of sweet, salty, sour,

like deep caramel.

And now I'm gonna scoop this batter.

[Crew] Fire.

Oh my god.

Do you know it's a kitchen?

It happens, problem solved.

Back to this cake. [laughs]

[beep]

So scoop out the batter to different areas of the cake pan.

That way spreading the batter around is gonna be easier.

And I wanna be gentle when I do that

because I don't want to move the plums around too much.

You know, we made that beautiful pattern on the bottom

and I want that to stay how it is.

Scrape off any excess using another spatula

or an offset like this,

and then spread the batter around gently

so that it covers the entire cake pan.

The cake is ready to go in the oven

and I'm gonna bake it at 350 for about an hour

until a cake skewer comes out clean,

and then we should be ready to taste.

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Ooh.

So you can see that there is a little even rise on top

and the crust was like really golden,

and it has also pulled away from the cake pan on the sides.

So I know for a fact that it's going to come off easily

and not be stuck.

Okay, this has been kind of cooling off

for about 15 to 20 minutes,

and now I'm going to take an offset spatula

and run it around the edge just as a final precaution

to make sure this doesn't stick to the sides.

And then I'm gonna take a plate

that is big enough to cover the base of the cake,

and moment of truth is flip it over.

[gasps]

There you go, it's beautiful.

It is a little bit more gooey than I would like.

It very much depends on the texture

and the ripeness of your fruit,

but it is going to taste good.

I know that for a fact.

So let's go ahead and slice into it and try some.

I am super happy with the inside.

It's so like flaky and the crumb is the perfect texture.

It's not too light, it's not too dense.

It's going to taste really good with those like jammy plums.

Vanilla ice cream makes everything better,

so I'm gonna scoop one.

And there you have it,

plum and lime upside-down cake

with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

[upbeat music]