I bought Rose Levy Berenbaum’s book, The Baking Bible awhile back, a giant chonk of a book with elaborate recipes. I was wrong in thinking that this book would be good for a beginner. It was the first baking book I bought and the last one after months and months of practice that I would use. However, the first time that I did use the book to make a Blueberry Rhubarb cake, it was amazing. Cran-Raspberry Upside-Down Cake is one of the first recipes to appear in this 576 page mammoth and I decided to make it as a gift for my partner’s mother as a baking challenge.
So we woke up early on a Sunday morning to make it, and like many of Rose’s recipes, it’s harder than it looks.
Rose’s recipes usually have several parts to them, even if it’s rather simple. For the Upside-Down Cake, there’s the batter part, then a cranberry topping, followed by a raspberry drizzle, finished by a raspberry Italian meringue. Even with two people, my partner Edgar helping me wash measuring cups and mix dry ingredients, time management was a hassle.
The most challenging part would have been the Italian Meringue. For those that aren’t familiar with making meringues, it involves beating an egg white with sugar until you form stiff peaks. When you’re finished, the mixture should be able to the stay up in the bowl by itself when you hold it upside down.
Mess up the meringue, and recipes like macarons and baked Alaskas, won’t work at all. Luckily, this meringue was a topping and technically optional. I had to make sugar syrup, to mix in with it but while multi-tasking, I had burned it so badly that it became solid and had to start again. And uh… I sorta burned my book by accident when it was too close to the stove.
We were so stressed out by the cake that I hardly remembered to take progress pictures. Here’s a shot of the defrosted cranberry topping, ready to be filled in with the batter.
Eventually, we got the batter well-baked and flipped the cake over. Even though the meringue deflated when I accidentally hand-mixed it over a hot stove, it turned out surprisingly okay in texture!
The cake had a beautiful color when we cut into it and best of all, Ma Ruiz loved it! It was light and fluffy, and not too sweet. The lemon taste in the cake was perfect, and making the meringue was definitely worth it.
We had a lovely time over at the Ruizes’ house! She also fed us and shared her own Mexican eggs & salsa recipe with me. I’ll definitely try to make that in that near future.
Unfortunately, later that evening, my own biological mother sent a passive aggressive group text to me and my sister reminding us that it was Mother’s Day. We don’t talk regularly anymore, and for good reason. Favors and gifts are never without an expectation for something in return. For the record, my own newfound passion of cooking wasn’t inspired by her. Let’s just say cooking was never a strong suit of hers, (something that she is greatly in denial about,) despite the rest of the family being very much in consensus about it. My grandma, on the other hand, was a solidly good Chinese cook, but an even more problematic and unbearable person. But that’s a story for another time.
Even though the Cran-Raspberry Upside-Down Cake was a challenge and one of the “simpler” recipe in Rose’s Baking Bible, I’m excited to try more, like Blueberry Coffee Crumb Cake or Cream Cheese Buttercake. One more recipe down, and many here’s to many more in the future!
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