Cardamom and Tea

upside-down plum cake + A Dish for All Seasons (my book!)

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Exciting news! My cookbook, A Dish for All Seasons is available for preorder wherever books are sold! 🎉 I am so excited to share it with you. Preorders are a huge help to new authors, so if you reserve a copy, please do message me so that I can thank you. 😊

This book flips the script on seasonal cooking. It’s made up of adaptable base recipes, like frittatas, grain bowls, and (you guessed it!) upside-down cakes. You can adapt each base recipe to feature whatever produce you’ve got. And each one comes with four beautiful seasonal variations.

So go to the market without a plan and just see what inspires you. Or choose a recipe and rest assured that you’ll actually be able to find the ingredients. (I mean, ever gone to the store hoping to find persimmons in spring or good tomatoes in late fall? Just me?).

plum upside down cake, shot from the side
A Dish for All Seasons, opened to the upside down cake section, with cake off to the side

For instance, here are the four seasonal upside-down cake recipes (pictured above):

  • chocolate apricot raspberry cake (summer)
  • fig semolina honey cake (fall)
  • pineapple gingerbread cake (winter)
  • strawberry rhubarb chocolate cake (spring)

Or if you don’t feel like following a recipe, you could come up with something else entirely. Like this cinnamon plum cake! Or a cherry chocolate cake *or* semolina peach cake *or* vanilla blueberry cake, or really whatever’s on your mind! Just use the seasonal produce charts and base recipe, and you’re all set.

plum upside down cake, shot from overhead, just the plums in the bottom of the pan before batter is poured on
plum upside down cake batter being smoothed out

Since I make so many things over and over again while recipe testing, I never like making the same thing more than once when I’m just cooking for fun. So instead of making one of the seasonal variations from the book, I thought I’d have fun using the base recipe to make something totally new.

I love the combination of cinnamon and plums, which work beautifully in this upside-down plum cake. I tweaked the cake batter a little to incorporate olive oil instead of butter, and brown sugar instead of granulated. Plums are on their way out of season here in Australia, but you should start seeing them in supermarkets in the northern hemisphere in the next couple weeks. Eek! Very exciting.

Anyway, hope you enjoy this one, or reserve a copy of A Dish for All Seasons and make your own upside-down cake, or your own whatever! And if you do, let me know what you come up with!

plum upside down cake, baked
plum upside down cake, flipped over and the pan being removed to reveal the cake underneath
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upside-down plum cake

plum upside down cake, shot from overhead
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4 from 1 review

adapted from A Dish for All Seasons

  • Author: Kathryn Pauline

Ingredients

For the fruit:

  • 3 Tbsp [40 g] extra virgin olive oil
  • 1/2 cup [100 g] dark brown sugar
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 3 cups [300 g] 1/2-inch thick plum slices

For the batter:

  • 1 1/2 cups [195 g] all purpose flour
  • 1 1/4 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 2 large eggs
  • 3 Tbsp [40 g] extra virgin olive oil
  • 3/4 cup [150 g] dark brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup [60 g] milk
  • 1/4 cup [60 g] plain, unstrained yogurt*

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F [180°C]. Butter a 9 in [23 cm] round cake pan. Cover the bottom with a parchment round.
  2. Prep the fruit: Combine the olive oil, brown sugar, and cinnamon in a small mixing bowl. Stir together until completely combined. Pour into the prepared cake pan. Use an offset spatula to spread everything out evenly until the bottom is covered. Arrange the plums in a single layer over the buttery brown sugar. Set aside.
  3. In a medium mixing bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.
  4. In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs and olive oil together until very well incorporated. Then add the brown sugar, milk, and yogurt, and beat to combine well.
  5. Pour the wet mixture over the dry mixture and stir together just until everything is combined. It won’t be completely smooth, and there might be some tiny lumps; this is completely fine. Don’t overmix!
  6. Carefully pour the batter over the plums, smooth out the top a little bit with a spatula, and bake for about 35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
  7. Let cool for 5 to 10 minutes in the cake pan. Then trace around the edge with a butter knife to make sure it’s loosened from the pan. Invert onto a serving plate, let cool for at least 30 minutes more, and serve.

Notes

* In A Dish for All Seasons, I use buttermilk, which you can use here in place of the yogurt and milk (just use 1/2 cup [120 g] buttermilk in place of both).

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red velvet brownies

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These red velvet brownies combine my favorite features of frosted brownies and red velvet cake. They’ve got all the flavor of red velvet cake in the form of a chewy brownie slice.

Just like your favorite red velvet cake, they’ve got the fluffy cream cheese frosting, that classic vanilla and lightly chocolatey flavor, and a lovely dark red color. But I’ve transformed their light and airy cake batter into chewy brownies and baked them in a square pan.

It’s the best of both worlds!

red velvet brownies being iced, photographed from a 45 degree angle
red velvet brownies being iced, photographed from a 45 degree angle

a few recipe tips:

doubling the frosting:

Feel free to make this recipe with 2x the frosting if you like a ratio that’s more like 1 part frosting to 1 part brownie. Right now it’s more like 1 part frosting to 2 parts brownie. If you’re mostly in it for the frosting, I’m not gonna stop you!

1 batch of frosting uses half a brick of cream cheese. So if you’re just trying to use up that whole brick of cream cheese (but don’t want extra frosting), you could always double the whole recipe and bake it in two square pans.

I have to admit, I tested this recipe a couple more times than I actually needed to, so I vote option 2!

customizing the frosting:

If you’d like your frosting to be more set, feel free to increase the butter to 4 Tbsp [60 g] total. I like a light and fluffy cream cheese frosting with a texture more like sour cream frosting. This one is dollopable right out of the fridge (as you can see from the photos), but holds the shape of swooshes, kind of like cream whipped to medium-soft peaks. Adding extra fat will help it solidify more when it chills. Just make sure to let it warm up a bit if it’s not spreadable straight from the fridge.

storage:

These brownies keep super well in either the refrigerator or the freezer, and can even be enjoyed frozen. Cream cheese frosting is a perishable dairy product, and should be treated like whipped cream—so the brownies should really be kept chilled for food safety reasons.

But it just so happens that they taste amazing chilled. So it’s a win-win! They’ll stay fresh for a couple days in the fridge, and will stay fresh for a month or two in the freezer when sealed tightly. Once we’ve enjoyed a few fresh, I always pop the leftovers right in the freezer, because they taste so good frozen.

red velvet brownies without icing
red velvet brownies being iced, photographed from a 45 degree angle

Ok so now I’m about to get a little nerdy about dessert mashups, so feel free to skip to the recipe if you’re not into the intersection of desserts and venn diagrams.

red velvet brownies mashup!

Whenever I make a dessert mashup, I try to make sure the final product represents both desserts pretty equally. And then I draw a venn diagram because I’m a dork. If one side isn’t fully represented in the center, it means I need to do a little tweaking. And if an essential feature of one dessert is left out, it means it’s probably not the best idea.

red velvet brownies venn diagram: The red velvet cake side contains 1) Dark red, 2) light and fluffy cake texture, 3) vanilla and light chocolate flavor, 4) layer cake, and 5) cream cheese frosting. The frostedbrownie side contains 1) chewy/fudgy texture, 2) intense chocolate flavor, 3) squares with chewy edges, and 4) cocoa butter cream. The center overlapping area (labeled red velvet brownies) contains 1) dark red, 2) chewy/fudgy texture, 3) vanilla/light chocolate, 4) squares, and 5) cream cheese frosting.

Here, you can see that the frosted brownies side is doing just fine. Cocoa buttercream swaps out for cream cheese frosting. And they’ve still got their chewy/fudgy texture.

But at first glance, they’re going to be a little lacking in chocolate flavor, compared to a traditional brownie. So to make sure they still taste like actual brownies, I increased the amount of cocoa so that it’s somewhere between the amount in a red velvet cake and a standard brownie. So now they’re a bit more chocolatey than a red velvet cake, but less chocolatey than a regular brownie.

The red velvet cake side is doing great too. Since I didn’t add too-too much cocoa powder, their red color still pops. They’ve also got that classic red velvet vanilla/light chocolate flavor, and they’re frosted with cream cheese frosting. Leaving either of those features out would be an absolute deal-breaker for me.

One thing missing is a layer cake arrangement and light/fluffy texture, since those features aren’t compatible with a brownie. But because we kept all their other important features, they still very much feel like red velvet brownies.

One other potential problem is the lack of buttermilk. Brownie batter has no room for extra liquid, but you’ll find buttermilk in most red velvet cake recipes. It’s not an absolutely essential ingredient, so we could get away with just forgetting about it. But just to add a little extra tanginess, I added a little bit of vinegar to the batter. We’re also using a tiny bit of baking powder, which doesn’t need vinegar to activate (unlike baking soda). So we’re just using the vinegar for its acidity, not its leavening power.

Without further ado, red velvet brownies!

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red velvet brownies

a sliced red velvet brownie with swooped frosting, photographed straight-on
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5 from 1 review

Ingredients

For the frosting:

  • 1 cup powdered sugar [120 g]
  • 4 oz cream cheese [115 g], at room temperature
  • 2 Tbsp unsalted butter [30 g], at room temperature
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract [10 g]
  • 1 pinch salt

For the brownies:

  • Butter for greasing the pan
  • 1¼ cup flour [160 g]
  • 3 Tbsp cocoa powder [20 g]
  • ½ tsp baking powder [2.5 g]
  • 3 large eggs [150 g]
  • 1⅔ cup sugar [335 g]
  • ½ tsp salt [5.5 g]
  • ⅔ cup canola oil [140 g]
  • 2 Tbsp liquid red food coloring* [30 g]
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract [10 g]
  • 1 tsp white vinegar [5 g]

Instructions

  1. Decorate the brownies once they’ve cooled: Dump all of the frosting into the center of the brownies. Use an offset spatula to work the frosting almost to the edges. Then make a few swoops in it with the spatula. Slice into 16 pieces.

Notes

* I developed this recipe with liquid food coloring because it’s easily accessible for most folks who read this blog. But if you have gel coloring, you can totally use it here instead. You’ll just need to use much less. Add it gradually to your wet ingredients until they’re deeply red.

Also note that natural food colorings will not dye your cake as dramatically as artificial colorings. This won’t affect the flavor, so feel free to use a natural food coloring, but adjust your expectations accordingly. And don’t use a bunch of extra liquid coloring to compensate, or it will throw off the amount of moisture in the recipe.

** If you let it chill for too long, it’ll stick to the pan a bit when you try to remove it. If so, just let it sit at room temperature for a few minutes until it’s easier to remove from the pan, and re-trace around the edges.

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