Plum Upsidedown Cake
Today we have a real culinary history classic for you because our plum upside-down cake is a further development of the famous French Tarte Tatin! Well then: get your notebooks out, the history lesson begins!
This special cake originally consisted of apples placed in slices on the bottom of the cake tin in caramel. A layer of puff pastry is then placed on top, and after baking the cake is turned out once so that the caramelized apples can be seen again. This little work of art was invented at the end of the 19th century by the two Tatin sisters, who ran a hotel together. However, it was not planned, but rather an oversight: one of the two sisters was somewhere else while baking, was probably already dreaming of the finished apple pie, and completely forgot to put the dough in the tin first! Instead, the fruit ended up at the bottom of the tin. Since there was already little time until the hotel guests' coffee party, she put the prepared base on top, baked the whole thing, and then turned it out on a cake plate. Her guests were impressed by the shiny caramel surface and the tart soon became world famous!
Unlike back then, today we deliberately put the fruit on the bottom and replace the apples with plums, because the taste of ripe plums baked in caramel is simply amazing! We don't use puff pastry on top either, but a wonderfully spicy sponge cake that will give you a delicious taste of the coming autumn. So everything is a bit different than back then, but we are quite sure that you will be just as impressed as the Tatin sisters' hotel guests.
And don't let the caramel put you off. The whole cake is super easy to make, and you probably already have almost all of the ingredients in your cupboard. We promise you: it's worth it!
Vegan Upside- Down- Cake with Plums
Ingredients
For the caramel layer:
- 500 g (1 Ib) ripe plums
- 160 g (1.25 cup) sugar
- 200 ml (0.75 cups) water
- 25 g (1 oz) vegan butter
- 1 pinch of salt
For the batter:
- 150 ml (0.66 cups) plant-based milk
- 2 bags of chai tea
- 150 g (5.66 oz) vegan butter
- 150 g (1.25 cup) sugar
- 300 g(2.25 cups) wheat flour (type 405)
- 8 g (1.5 tsp) vanilla sugar
- 10 g (2 tsp) baking powder
- 1 pinch of salt
- 1 orange (juice and peel)
- 0.5 tsp ground clove
- 0.5 tsp ground cinnamon
- 0.5 tsp ground cardamom
Also:
- 200 g (1.5 cups) vegan cream for whipping
- 16 g (1.5 tbsp) vanilla sugar
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 180 °C (top/bottom heat). Line a springform pan (24 centimeters in diameter) with baking paper so that no liquid can run out of the pan later. Pit the plums, quarter them, and put them aside.
For the caramel, put the sugar and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil, but do not stir. Simmer both together for 5-10 minutes until the mixture turns a light old yellow. Stir in the vegan butter and salt and pour the caramel into the prepared springform pan. Then arrange the plum slices in the pan in a fan shape.
Boil the plant-based milk for the dough with the chai tea and let it steep for a few minutes.
Beat the vegan butter with sugar in a bowl. Mix the wheat flour, vanilla sugar, baking powder, spices and salt separately and add to the butter-sugar mixture. Then add the chai milk and the juice and zest of the orange and quickly mix everything into a smooth dough.
Pour the batter over the plums and bake for 60 minutes at 180 °C (top/bottom heat), then leave to cool in the tin for 1 hour until the resulting syrup has become viscous and solid. Only then should you turn the cake out onto a cake plate. If the syrup is not yet solid enough to turn out, leave the cake to set in the fridge for a few hours or overnight, then turn it out.
Beat the vegan whipped cream and vanilla sugar with a hand mixer or food processor and serve the whipped cream with the cake.
