Welcome Home Honey

Every now and then James decides he is going to juice. And he does . . . for a bit. But then I am invariably left with giant bags of carrots or apples filling up our very small fridge. Today I decided to use up some of those apples and welcome James home at the same time with this maple walnut apple upside down cake.

Upside down cakes are on of my favorite easy desserts. For this maple version (starting from an old Food and Wine Magazine recipe) I boiled down a cup of maple syrup to make a thick toping. I poured the reduced syrup into a 10" buttered and floured cake pan and topped the syrup with thinly sliced apples and chopped walnuts. To cover the fruit I poured a batter of 1 1/2 sticks butter creamed with 1 1/3 cup sugar I mixed together 2 cups flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp baking soda, and a tsp of salt in one bowl. In another bowl I mixed almost 3/4 cup of milk with a dash of vinegar (about 2 tsp -- no buttermilk in the house), 3 eggs and about 1 TB of bourbon. I added the dry and wet ingredients (alternating) to the creamed butter and then spread the batter over the waiting fruit and syrup. The cake baked for 1 1/2 hours at 350º and then cooled for 45 minutes in the pan before I unmolded the sticky, apple dessert.

Maybe a little wintery for a chilly April day but it's nice to have the room in the fridge (and James back too).