Okay, so I decided to try my hand at a rhubarb upside down cake. Saw a recipe online, looked easy enough, right? It was for a 13×9 inch pan, which I happen to have, so I thought, “Let’s do this!”
First things first, I preheated the oven. Gotta get that going. Then I started on the rhubarb. I had some fresh rhubarb from the farmer’s market, so I chopped it up into decent-sized chunks. Not too big, not too small. You know, just right.
Next up, the caramel. This is where things got a little tricky. The recipe called for melting butter and brown sugar in the pan on the stovetop. Seemed simple enough, but I definitely burned the butter a little bit. Oops! It still smelled good though, so I went with it. I arranged the rhubarb on top of the caramel in a pretty pattern. Or at least, I tried to.
Now for the cake batter. It was a pretty standard cake recipe: butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, a little milk. I mixed it all together in my trusty stand mixer. It came together nice and smooth. I poured the batter carefully over the rhubarb in the pan.
Then, into the oven it went! The recipe said to bake it for around 45 minutes. I checked it after about 40, and it was looking golden brown and delicious. I stuck a toothpick in the center, and it came out clean. Success!
The hardest part was letting it cool before flipping it. I waited about 10 minutes, then carefully ran a knife around the edges to loosen it. I put a plate on top of the pan and flipped the whole thing over. And… it worked! The cake came out beautifully, with the caramelized rhubarb on top.
Honestly, it tasted even better than it looked. The cake was moist and fluffy, and the rhubarb was tart and sweet. The slightly burnt caramel added a nice little something. I’ll definitely be making this again! Maybe next time, I’ll be a little more careful with the caramel. But hey, even with a slight mishap, it turned out amazing. Definitely recommend giving it a try!
