Cast Iron Fridays & Upside Down Cakes

Welcome everyone to Cast Iron Fridays,
   
   I love and still use mostly cast iron in my every day cooking. I thought I would share one of my loves with you on Fridays.
   This event is also open for you to link up with your own cast iron cooking-baking post. 
    Anything cooked, baked, grilled in cast iron or enameled over cast iron indoors or outdoors is welcome. If you take your cast iron on your camping trips or other outdoor events you are most welcome to share as well.
   I know several of my readers have used cast iron but no longer are able to use it much any more. You are most welcome though to join in with tips or your recipes.

   Cast Iron Fridays is for sharing "Good Eats" with each other.

 This has been one of those weeks so I have not done any fun baking in my cast iron. Tonight though I decided to bake up an upside down apple-pear-plum cake. I rarely bake this late in the day but I decided to save time and bake tonight-great for breakfast too (smiling)

   Upside down cakes turn out so well in cast iron. You can pretty much use any fruit you like on the bottom. Even canned fruits bake up well just be sure to drain well.  I had never been a fan of box cake mixes, but they do work out really well for gluten free cakes. Tonight I am using a new to me cake mix by Bob's Red Mill. I also loaded up the bottom of the pan with lots of fruits, this way some of the fruit will also bake into the cake as well.
   I grabbed a deeper Wagner cast iron skillet which I also have the lid for. The photos really show up the rusty outside which I will remedy this summer. The inside though is seasoned very well. I have used this pan allot in my outdoor cooking

I took this photo so you can see the depth of the pan on the left compared to a regular skillet

These are the ingredients. the cake mix, coconut oil instead of butter, coconut sugar instead of brown sugar, and 4 smaller eggs instead of 3 large ones I also melted a little butter around two tablespoons.

I melt just enough butter to cover the bottom of the pan-most recipes call for allot more but I have found you don't really need it if you care not to add all that butter in

Instead of brown sugar I now use coconut sugar. I sprinkle a good amount all over the bottom

I used fruits that I peeled and diced. I ended up with too many apples so I am thinking I used 4 apples, one pear, and the three plums I added in some plums to add some juiciness

Over the fruit I sprinkled cinnamon and added about 4 tablespoons of homemade maple syrup that our friend from Green Bay Wisconsin brought us last November

Sorry I totally forgot to take a photo of the fruit on the bottom before I added the cake batter. The fruit was pretty thick on the bottom guessing over an inch deep

  The directions for baking the cake was for 325 f degrees. I thought that sounded pretty low for this After the recommended baking time plus a few more minutes my cake is still not baked so I just upped the temperature to 350 f degrees.

The cake is in the oven while I type my post.

Since it is getting late here I am going to post this so if any of you wish to link up tonight you can.

   Do stop by again though to see the results.

It's almost 10 pm here now but the cake is out of the oven-and it smells so delicious, the maple syrup is coming through

The cake came out of the oven an hour ago so the cast iron is warm but not super hot. Don't know how I managed it but I did get the cake flipped over. I used a big cookie pan and thought positive haha

This cake smells even more amazing now

and with a well seasoned cast iron pan the cake came right out no sticking

Of course I needed to reward myself with a warm slice-soooo delicious the maple syrup really added to the cake. (no this is not my piece-what is missing was haha)