Harvest Upside-Down Cake

This upside-down cake trades the usual pineapple rings for sliced apples and cranberry sauce, making it a natural fit for fall baking. The fruit sits in a pool of melted butter and brown sugar on the bottom of the skillet, and as it bakes, that sugar caramelizes into a sticky, amber glaze that coats the apples when you flip it.

The cranberry sauce spooned between the rows of apple slices melts down during baking and creates ruby-red streaks through the caramel. It adds a tart punch that balances the sweetness of the brown sugar and keeps the whole thing from being one-note.

The cake batter is a simple one-bowl mix with shortening, which gives it a lighter, more tender crumb than an all-butter cake would. It pours right over the fruit and bakes into a golden, springy layer that soaks up the caramelized juices from below.

Flip it immediately when it comes out of the oven. Leave the skillet upside down over the cake for a few minutes so every drop of that brown sugar glaze runs down over the fruit. Wait too long and the sugar hardens, gluing the cake to the pan.

Pro Tips

• Use an ovenproof skillet or heavy metal pan. Glass bakeware doesn’t conduct heat the same way and you won’t get proper caramelization on the fruit layer.
• Arrange the apple slices in tight, overlapping rows. They shrink as they cook, so gaps in the raw arrangement become bare spots after baking.
• Slice apples evenly, about ¼ inch thick. Too thick and they won’t soften fully; too thin and they dissolve into mush.
• Serve warm with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. The contrast of cold cream against warm caramelized cake is what makes this dessert.

Variations

• Add a teaspoon of cinnamon and a pinch of ginger to the batter for a spiced fall version.
• Use pears instead of apples for a softer, more delicate fruit layer.
• Swap cranberry sauce for whole fresh cranberries tossed with a tablespoon of sugar for a sharper, more textured topping.