Sumac & Berry Upside Down Cake

Adding the walnut topping to the Sumac & Berry Upside Down Cake

This upside-down cake is the perfect recipe to make the most out of fresh or homegrown berries. With ginger, cinnamon and sumac, its spicy and complex flavours make it warm, indulgent and instantly delicious.

While the recipe calls for fresh berries you can absolutely use frozen berries and the cake will still work fine. You can also experiment with different fruit combinations - instead of strawberries and blueberries you could try peaches and raspberries, plums and mulberries or nectarines and mango.

Sumac & Berry Upside Down Cake

Serves 8

Ingredients

100g butter

1⁄2 cup brown sugar plus 1 tbsp (or 120g)

3 eggs

1⁄4 cup natural yoghurt

2 tsp fresh ginger, grated

1 tbsp milk

Juice 2 lemons

1 cup wholemeal self raising flour

1⁄4 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp sumac (if you can’t find sumac, use 1 tsp lemon rind as a substitute)

1⁄2 cup blueberries

1 cup strawberries (hulled but kept whole)

2 tbsp raw sugar

1⁄4 cup walnuts, broken up into chunky pieces

Method

Cream the butter and brown sugar with electric beaters, add the eggs and whisk a little more, then stir in the yoghurt, ginger, milk and lemon juice.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, sumac and cinnamon, then stir this gently into the wet mixture (from step 1).

Grease and line a 20cm spring-form cake pan with baking paper. Scatter the blueberries, strawberries and raw sugar evenly over the bottom of the cake pan, then pour the cake mixture on top.

Bake the cake in the oven at 160 ̊C for 60 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean (it may have a little berry juice on the end, but it should be free from wet cake mixture).

Serve warm with the walnuts sprinkled on top, some freshly whipped cream, or a scoop of vanilla ice-cream.

Want more recipes?

This recipe is a sneak peak from my cookbook Pinch Dash Glug: Summer/Autumn

If you enjoyed it you’ll love the cookbook, which is filled with delicious recipes to make the most of our seasonal ingredients through summer and autumn.

Grab a copy below (in print or digital) and get cooking!

a few more sweets to try