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Writer's pictureAshley Catt

A meaningful contribution (part-two)

A little while ago, when the quarantine was in it's infancy and we were just becoming accustomed to the shrinking of our worlds, I wrote a post about my job being furloughed. At the time, this meant that my job was effectively on pause while the company I worked for weathered the difficult economic conditions we're facing currently and operated on a skeleton crew. I'm not sure how to gracefully transition into the next part of this story, so let's put it like this; do you ever pause a Netflix show you're bored of, thinking that you'll return to it later in the day despite knowing at the back of your mind that you never will? It turns out, that's pretty much what my employers had been doing with my job. As of tomorrow, I will have been made redundant.


I don't want to overplay this too much. Losing my job has the potential to seem dramatic, but it's not as if I had any non-financial attachments to this job, it was just something to get me through university and to whatever happened to come after that. The "question" of afterwards may have been answered in the form of dashed PhD hopes (coupled with the ensuing gloom) and a global pandemic, but at least it felt as if I had a safety net below me. It'd be wrong to say that this has put me in an immediately precarious position, but if I were questioning my purpose and the value of my actions before then it is safe to say that this has intensified as a result.


I heard about this on Thursday, and since then I've felt strangely untethered. It feels like I could drift anywhere after this has all ended. It sounds like it should be freeing, but it feels a little bit like a great oceanic trench has beneath the balcony of my flat; I can look down into it but I can't make out shapes nor shadows. So many people seem to be vaguely repeating the line that "things are going to change" when the pandemic is over, but I can't help but wonder whether anyone has stopped to apply that same sentiment to their personal lives. I haven't a clue what form the future will take, but I find it hard to imagine that it won't be somewhat from the shape it took back in February, and before.


So, what does one do when it appears that everything has been turned on it's head? Make upside down cake.


...okay, so that might have been a pretty tenuous segue, but there's something about the currently prevailing feeling of instability and chaos that pushes us to do things that are pleasant and enjoyable. I take a perverse amount of amusement from the moment an upside down cake gets inverted from my spring form pan, so upon seeing cherries in the Co-Op for 99p per punnet that is where my mind near immediately went.


There's also an observation that housemate-of-the-blog Rebecca made about fresh fruit that it just seems effortlessly luxurious. I'm pretty sure that she was talking about grapes at the time, the fruit made to be consumed from the hands of a toga-garbed muse on a marble klinai, but this same sense could be applied to anything. When I was much younger, I was obsessed with cherry flavoured beverages (which I was rarely allowed due to it's unnatural colour) but I had never tried a real version of the fruit simply because they were too expensive for my parents to justify buying; fresh fruit in general wasn't particularly common in our house. I did, however, go to school with a boy who usually had cherries in his lunchbox; I naturally assumed that he was descended from kings.


So, coming from a childhood that was both free from cherries and from baking, the idea of making an upside-down cherry cake seemed to be an ideal "I've-just-lost-my-job-let's-do-something-nice-and-fancy-but-not-actually-fancy" endeavour. Have you ever made a fruit upside down cake before? You absolutely have to; they are so fun. You start by layering the fruit on the bottom of the cake pan in whatever creative pattern you like (you'll see that I did a very standard pattern, but you are free to make a Dali-esque, cherry-based nightmare-scape if you so wish) before pouring over the cake batter. The inversion means that your fruit pattern will end up on the top of the cake. It's a very easy way to make something beautiful.


The cherries in question are both at the top of the cake, and incorporated within the batter. This can be a source of horror for some bakers (me included), but I found some super handy tips on this blog post about baking with fresh fruit by Maurine Dashney. You might want to a have a read of the full thing, but I've summarised the most relevant tips below:

  • Use smaller pieces: the fruit should be light enough to stay suspended within the batter and not sink to the bottom.

  • Use a sharp knife: the logic here is that blunt knives will burst more cell walls in the fruit, whereas a sharper knife will slice cleanly through and keep the juice within the fruit.

  • Roll the fruit in flour before incorporating into the batter: this was an interesting tip! This will keep the juice contained and it will prevent the fruit from sinking.

Now, for the sake of transparency I think it's pretty imperative that I tell you that I undermined the above tips by forgetting to add the chopped cherries to the cake mix before I poured it over the cherries for the top of the cake. I also need to tell you that it was fine; I mixed them as well I could into the poured batter without disrupting the cherries underneath, and while they were concentrated very slightly towards the bottom of the cake, they all stayed in their position. Even so, do double check that you have added everything before pouring!


Upside-Down Cherry Cake

Preparation time: 35 minutes

Baking time: 50 minutes

Makes 8-10 slices

Ingredients

150g unsalted butter, cut into cubes and softened

115g caster sugar

1/2 tbsp of light brown sugar

300g fresh cherries

2 eggs + 1 egg yolk

1 tsp lemon juice

1 tbsp milk

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

200g plain flour + 1/2 a tbsp

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp baking powder


Method

Pre-heat your oven to 180°C (or 160°C for fan powered ovens).


Grease and line an 8" round cake tin (a spring form pan is good for this but not essential by any means).

Take 140g of the cherries and halve them, making sure to remove the pit. Sprinkle the bottom of the pan evenly with the light brown sugar and arrange the cherries in an even, circular fashion. Cut the remaining 160g of cherries into small pieces. I generally do this by halving each cherry, and then cutting each half into nine pieces, slicing in a way that resembled an noughts and crosses grid (or tic-tac-toe depending on geography). Take care to use a sharp blade here and avoid crushing any of the cherries. Put the cherries in a bowl and add 1/2 a tbsp of plain flour, stirring into the fruit.


Add the butter and the caster sugar to a large mixing bowl and cream on a low setting with an electric mixer until it is pale and fully aerated. This should take around 5-7 minutes, or a little bit longer if you are doing this by hand. Add the eggs, and continue to beat on a low setting for a further 2 minutes. Change to a wooden spoon and stir in the vanilla extract, milk and lemon juice.

Sift in the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves and salt and fold into the batter until just combined. It is important that you fold gently here and do not over mix; this will ensure that the air you have whipped into the batter doesn't collapse.


Pour the batter carefully over the cherries in the cake tin and smooth out the top. Put the cake tin the oven and bake for 35 minutes at 180°C (or 160°C for fan powered ovens). After 35 minutes has elapsed, turn the heat up by 20°C and bake for a further 8 minutes. This will allow the edges of the cake to brown without overcooking the inside.


Remove from the oven and check the cake is cooked by inserting a clean knife. If the knife comes out clean, then the cake is done. Cool in the pan for 5 minutes before inverting on to a cooling rack and admiring your creation.


Notes & Adjustments

  • Feel free to use whatever fruit you like or have to hand. Fleshier fruits or berries work best. You may wish to tailor the flavours in the cake to suit the fruit. I think that a light sprinkling of cinnamon, cloves and vanilla complements cherries, so you may wish to adjust this if changing the fruit. If you were using peaches, for example, I might be tempted to use light brown sugar instead of caster and substitute the cinnamon for ground ginger. But I won't be prescriptive, and I'll let you explore this with freedom!

  • The cinnamon and cloves can be changed up if you'd prefer different spices. You could add more into the mixture as well if you like.

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