Caramel apple upside-down cake

On the cover of this month's Delicious magazine, there was a photo of the most luscious looking autumnal cake I had seen for some time.  Wanting to know more, I bought the magazine and learned that the luscious cake was a Caramel Apple Upside-Down Cake by Valli Little, with a layer of golden caramel on top of the apple slices on top of the cake, and with dulce de leche in the cake batter.  Yum!

Unlike my usual habit of putting away magazines without making anything, I promptly bought everything that I needed to make the Caramel Apple Upside-Down Cake.    The only hitch was that I could not find dulce de leche in my supermarket, so I used David Lebovitz's baked condensed milk method to make some non-scary dulce de leche of my own.

Here is the resulting cake:

Valli advises to serve the cake warm, and I agree with her assessment - I found the cake a little dry and heavy when it was cold.  However, I took it to work and the verdict was that the punters liked it warm or cold.  Just goes to show what a personal thing taste can be.

If you would like to make this warming, pudding-like cake, you will need:

220g sugar
3 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and sliced 1cm thick
175g salted butter
100g brown sugar
200g dulce de leche
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
175g self raising four
100g almond meal

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

Grease and line a 24cm springform pan., and wrap the outside of the pan in foil to stop it from leaking during cooking.

Put the sugar in a saucepan with 2 tablespoons of water, and stir over low heat until the sugar dissolves, then increase to medium heat and allow the mixture to cook, without stirring, until it turns golden amber in colour.  Pour the caramel over the base of the prepared pan and set aside to cool.

Lay overlapping slices of apple in concentric circles over the caramel in the base of the pan.

Put the butter and brown sugar into an electric mixer and beat until thick and pale, then beat in the dulce de leche and vanilla.  Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then fold in the flour and almond meal.  Pour the batter over the apples in the cake tin, and spread out evenly.

Place the cake into the oven to bake for 35-40 minutes or until cooked through.

Cool the cake in the tin for 10 minutes before inverting onto a plate to cool until just warm.

Serve with cream or icecream - enjoy!