Week Four: Upside Down - no, not THAT upside down - Banana Toffee Cake

We aren't venturing into The Upside Down a la Stranger Things, but rather, this week's cake was upside down! 

When I look at my pile of "to try" cake recipes, some themes certainly emerge: chocolate, old-fashioned pound cakes, quirky (giant chili dog cake, anyone?) and upside down/skillet, so this week, I tried my hand at a new upside down cake recipe made in our handy cast iron skillet. 

Homemade pineapple upside down cake was one of the desserts I mastered (thank you, 11th grade Foods & Nutrition class) and is likely one of the fastest cakes to throw together. If I got a call that friends were coming over, I could easily make a pineapple upside down cake within half an hour with pantry staples. 

Since I'm confident with the classic, I decided to mix it up a little with an Upside Down Banana Toffee Cake recipe that I pinned a zillion pre-baby years ago. 

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Week Four! We're closing in on the half-way point of my bake-till-2018 countdown!


To recap:

Week 1: Coconut Cream Poke Cake 

Week 2: Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Week 3: Orange Chiffon Cake with Candied Zest

Week 4: Upside Down Banana Toffee Cake 

This cake was pretty darn delicious right out of the oven; but really, what cake isn't? And because the recipe suggests that "The cake is really at its best on the first day" we did our darnedest to eat as much as we could and what was left actually served as Sunday night's dinner. Isn't adulthood great? 

The author complained her 12-inch pan made for a very thin cake, but our 10-inch skillet brought us a beautifully thick and fluffy cake beneath the sticky bananas. However, her instructions to cut the bananas lengthwise, halve and cut into 1.5" slices made for a cake that 1. didn't match her beautiful photos and 2. made for clunky slicing.  

The real beautiful thing though, is the flavor of this cake. I used almost an entire airplane bottle of Bacardi in the toffee and batter and I was seriously worried it would come off as too boozy. I imagine everyone who drank (underage) for drinking's sake has at least one liquor/cocktail/punch that was ruined by a night of overdoing it. Just the thought of Parrot Bay coconut rum makes my skin crawl, so I was nervous. But I had faith in the flavors of bananas foster and wasn't disappointed. Bananas and rum pair together so beautifully, and the nutmeg and cinnamon in the cake batter were a perfect fit. The rum didn't stand out, it only enhanced the warm spices and tropical banana flavor. Praise the Lord. 

I will say though, that the preparation was a little more daunting than my traditional pineapple upside down cake and I may have been a bit meek in my execution. I normally make my pineapple cake in a cake pan without actively cooking the topping (I just mix the sugar, butter and *pro tip: pineapple juice* in the pan itself before arranging the fruit). The distinction here (as you can see in her photos) is that this is supposed to be more reminiscent of a toffee/caramel on top. Caramel is basically burnt sugar, however, there is a fine line between burnt, beautiful, smooth caramel that coats fruit but slides gently out of the pan and burnt, stringy, forever-stuck-to-the-pan gunk. I live in fear of that distinction and likely under-cooked my "toffee." It was still fairly blonde and I could still recognize some sugar crystals instead of pure smoothness. But it came out of the pan perfectly; again, praise the Lord. 

And that darn toffee and upside-downness brings me to two important points about upside down cakes, and this one in particular. 

Clunky 'naners and a pitiful "platter"

First, everyone needs to invest in a big platter or heavy-duty cake stand/carrier for upside down cakes. We have a zillion tools, appliances and do-dads in our kitchen that make our culinary lives so much easier. But some of the simplest things, like having a flat surface big enough to flip a cake onto and then serve from, escape us. So pardon the tackiness of my cake on a neon green cutting board. 

Secondly, everyone needs to invest some time into lining their oven and cleaning it regularly. Apparently my toffee bubbled and sizzled and oozed its way right out of my skillet and onto the bottom of my oven. Of course I didn't notice until I began preheating the oven to make dinner last night and our kitchen filled with billowy dark smoke. My holiday break is going to be spent with some heavy-duty chemicals and a Brillo pad. I highly recommend a product like this that you can use in your oven and remove to clean, instead of breaking your back scraping burnt toffee (maybe someday I'll listen to my own advice). And/or consider putting your skillet (or God bless you, a springform pan) on a baking sheet. 

So grab yourself a big ass plate, a huge can of oven cleaner and an industrial fan (ventilation is important), a pint of vanilla ice cream, and dive into the project of making (and cleaning up after) a delicious banana upside down cake.