There's this thing I learned from the internet, and that's that some people reward themselves with food.
That's weird to me.
I don't want to have to deal with an exceptionally stressful day before I chow down on a piece of chocolate. If I want to eat the chocolate and I'm hungry, I'm going to eat it. End of story. I guess I'm not much of an emotional eater, but rather someone who looks at food as a necessity that I want to enjoy.
I don't eat things I don't like. That's just a waste of calories, in my opinion.
I do believe in dessert on a regular basis. REAL dessert. Not fat-free (read: taste-free) processed garbage, but real dessert. I personally find it far more satisfying to eat a really good piece of cake than an entire plate of crap cake. It's kind of crazy how, for me, balance starts with allowing myself to eat the things I truly want.
THAT is why I make something seriously good at least once per week.
I think THAT is also why the resident 7-year old ignores the any junk food that ends up in the pantry. She seems to prefer a small piece of homemade dessert over anything else that shows up around here.
She most definitely preferred the Pear Upside-Down Cake I made this week to the piles of candy sitting around, left over from a birthday party. So did I. Because ZOMG.
This Pear Upside-Down Cake isn't terribly sweet, but yet it fits that sweet need. It's a fantastic balance of pears, caramel, and a crumbly cake that reminds me of cornbread. It is SO good.
I found the recipe over here. I made a couple of minor changes, because of course I did.
Note: Read the ingredients all the way through before shopping. This requires the same ingredients across multiple steps. For example, the total amount of butter required is two sticks.
Pear Upside-Down Cake
4 tablespoons butter
2 Anjou pears, cored and thinly sliced
4 tablespoons butter (yes, again)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 stick (8 tablespoons) butter, room temperature (yes, again again!)
1/2 cup sugar
2 large eggs
3/4 cup buttermilk
1. Prep your 9 inch cake pan by coating it with butter and then flour. Set it aside.
2. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
3. Throw the first 4 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet. Melt it over medium heat and then keep cooking it so that it turns brown, stirring constantly. You're not burning it, you're making it awesome. Once it is browned, pour it into a small bowl and put it in the freezer. It needs to be in there about ten minutes or until it turns into something that looks kind of like frosting. Stir it a few times when it's in the freezer so that it doesn't straight up turn into frozen butter. Just ... thickened. Again, it should be the consistency of frosting.
4. Throw the other 4 tablespoons of butter into your skillet over medium heat. Once it's melted, add the brown sugar and stir to mix. You now have caramel. Good job!
4. Add the pears to the skillet. Heat them for two minutes in the caramel sauce. Once done, set the whole skillet aside.
5. Toss the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder into a medium mixing bowl. Whisk it together.
6. In a large mixing bowl, cream together the 8 tablespoons of butter, your browned butter from the freezer, and the 1/2 cup of sugar. Add the eggs and mix some more.
7. Alternately add the flour mixture and the buttermilk until everything is combined and you have a thick cake batter.
8. Remember those pears you set aside a while back? It's time to place them in the bottom of your cake pan. You can arrange them all pretty if you want, but it will taste the same no matter what you do. Make sure you pour all that fantastic caramel in there as well.
9. Glop the cake batter on top of the pears/caramel. It's thick, so it won't spread all that well. Don't worry about it if you can't get it to spread all the way to the edges. It will expand as it bakes, so it will fill in the gap all by itself.
10. Place your cake pan on top of a cookie sheet just in case there is a little overflow during baking (I didn't have any, but I bet it's totally possible). Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes. It's done when it is browned and you can stick a toothpick in it without it coming back out all sticky and stuff.
11. Allow the cake to cook at room temperature for at least 30 minutes.
12. When you're ready to flip the cake onto a plate, start by taking a knife and scoring all the way around the outside edge. Then put the plate on top of the cake and flip. Hang tight and the cake should fall out of the pan all by itself.
13. The cake tastes amazing all by itself, but it's also good served with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. I'm just saying.