Upside down cake - what am I doing wrong?

florence14, Oct 23, 8:20am
I made a pear and ginger upside down cake for the first time tonight. After checking lots of recipe books I followed one that seemed typical of most. The recipe (which I followed carefully) stated to use a springform cake tin, (which many do to make cake removal easy). Then make a butter and brown sugar syrup, and pour over the sliced pears. Then the cake mixture over the top, and into the oven. Well - after about 20 minutes oven was full of smoke. The syrup had oozed out and created a terrible mess. Anyone else had this trouble?

florence14, Oct 23, 8:23am
PS. Cake looked and tasted OK. It probably would have been sweeter with the syrup on bottom. Nevertheless we had it with cream and it was quite good.

buzzy110, Oct 23, 8:26am
florence14, the syrup had leaked out of the tin. I always made mine in an ordinary tin, lined with a round of baking paper. It came out better because it is supposed to be inverted, so that the fruit and sweet crust from the syrup, is on the top, after cooking.

florence14, Oct 23, 8:31am
buzzy 110 - Right, next time it is a regular fixed bottom cake tin. I will have to get one the right size. Would an ovenproof ceramic dish do the trick as well do you think?

donkey25, Oct 23, 8:50am
just pop yr tin on some tinfoil making sure it goes up the sides - press around tin to create a seal

uli, Oct 23, 8:54am
I make mine in my trusty old stainless frypan. I melt butter, add a bit of sugar and lay apples into that.

Then add the sponge or whatever cake mix over the top - sometimes I use puff pastry, or flakey pastry.

Bake and then invert when cool. No leakage of course. But sometimes I have to cut it into 4 to get it out if it got too sticky at the bottom.

buzzy110, Oct 23, 10:25am
uli, did you know you can line your pan with baking paper and then melt your butter, etc, onto that.

buzzy110, Oct 23, 10:29am
Not sure. I used to cook perfect cakes in a square ceramic dish till someone broke it and I've never found one I could get the same results in as that dish.Each dish is different. Some people hate them, whilst others find that they get surprisingly good results.

Suggest you try it and see.

elliehen, Oct 23, 11:41am
And I make mine in my trusty old cast iron skillet!

I bought one without a wooden handle especially so that I could use it in the oven as well as on the stovetop.

uli, Oct 23, 9:32pm
Yes I know - but why would I use silicone sprayed paper if I don't need to?

The cake gets cut into 8 or 12 anyway, so it doesn't do it any harm to be cut into 4 before being removed from the frypan.

Besides I love the half caramel that comes from the butter and brown sugar into which the apples go and I could not do that with baking paper which can only be heated to 200 degrees. I have heated it to 240 once by mistake and it burned into a brown crisp ...

margyr, Jun 19, 7:57pm
#1 did you line your spring tin?? If you lined it really well then the syrup should have stayed in.