Blueberry Upside Down Cake

For Father’s Day, Mike and I went to LA for a BBQ at his parent’s house. I spent the morning baking. YIKES! I made little blueberry upside down cakes. I was inspired by Mike’s recent birthday dinner at one of Santa Barbara’s finest restaurants, Bouchon. Our meal was AMAZING. I actually tried frog legs and it’s true, they do taste like chicken. For dessert we had blueberry upside down cake with fresh lemon ice cream. It was heavenly! It felt like the perfect summer dessert. I wanted to try and recreate it for the Father’s Day BBQ. Luckily, on Bouchon's website, they posted a recipe for a raspberry pear upside down cake. I used the basic recipe, but used blueberries instead of raspberries and lemon instead of pears.

Blueberry Upside Down Cake

2 cups of fresh organic blueberries
1 cup organic flour
½ cup organic white sugar
1 ½ tsp baking powder
½ cup butter
1 egg
½ cup whole milk
1 lemon
2 Tbsp organic white sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift flour and baking powder. I don't have a sifter, so I put the flour and baking powder into a zip lock bag and shook it for 1 minute. Set aside. Combine 1/2 cup of sugar and butter together in a small Cuisinart and blend till smooth. Add one beaten egg and blend with sugar butter mixture. Add flour mixture to sugar mixture, 1/3 at a time, alternating with 1/3 of milk each time. Stirring ingredients together with a whisk. Mix it the juice from one lemon. Set aside. Mix blueberries berries in 2 T. sugar. Grate lemon rind into the blueberries and sugar.


Butter 6 individual ramekins and layer each with berries.








Cover fruit with cake batter.







Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 35 minutes or until done.







Let cool 5 minutes. Invert ramekin onto a plate and top with Lemon Zest Ice Cream.

This cake got excellent reviews from the family, but it's family, they have to say they like it. Truthfully, Bouchon's version was much better. The flavors in my cake were very similar to the cake at Bouchon's but the texture seemed very different. The cake batter dripped down into the berries which gave the top of the cake a gluey consistency. I'm wondering if I should have used a thicker layer of blueberries. I also had a difficult time getting this little cakes to cook all the way through. This may be because I baked them for 25 minutes at home, and then baked them for 10 more minutes at Mike's parent house. Thankfully, the ice cream covered up the fact that the cake was slightly underdone. When the cakes came out of the over, I noticed that the cake on top cracked as it baked. If you look at the picture of the cake baked in the ramekin, you'll see what I mean. I'm not quite sure why this happnened, but I'm assuming that a proper cake does not crack. Anyone know why this happened?

For all this cakes imperfections, it was still delicious. McConnells lemon ice cream is out of this world. I am looking forward to trying this recipe again.