Jimsy Jampots #174 - Lemon, Ginger and Pear Upside-Down Cake
In which I actually give you four recipes in one newsletter
Things I think
My husband Garry has ulcerative colitis. It’s a chronic autoimmune condition categorised by inflammation of, and bleeding ulcers along, the digestive tract. He also gets a side-effect of arthritis, which moves around his body and increases/decreases in severity according to the weather, any other things going on in his body at the time, and the whims of some bastard god with a sadistic sense of humour. He’s technically disabled, but as the symptoms come and go, and range between being unable to walk or hold his own knife and fork to having a bit of a twinge in his shoulder, he doesn’t like using the term. Most of the early phases of our relationship were dominated by managing his UC before it was under control - I wrote about it, if you want to learn more.
I promise, this incredibly depressing intro has a point.
As with many autoimmune conditions, the treatment for ulcerative colitis is a hefty dose of immunosuppressants - the kind they give people after organ transplants to stop bodies from rejecting the new organ - which means Garry’s immune system is utterly shit. Having two little germ factories kids has been fun. Emrys has recently started nursery and is bringing back bugs and germs on a weekly basis, so Garry is currently being completely taken out by colds that the baby just brushes off.
These immunosuppressants meant that during the pandemic, Garry fell right into the “extremely clinically vulnerable” category, so for a time neither he nor I were allowed to leave the house at all - not for daily walks, not to go to the shop, nothing. As part of this, we got weekly food packages from the government so that we shouldn’t have to leave the house (although the packages themselves contained slightly less than the amount of food one adult would need for five days and we were a household of two adults, one of whom was breastfeeding, and a weaning baby, so it didn’t quite meet the brief). They were weird packages, made up of multiple varieties of bashed-about fruit and different types of beans, but one thing they contained fairly reliably was a tin of pineapple rings.
So I made pineapple upside-down cake. Of course I made pineapple upside-down cake. I was locked in a house with a vulnerable husband at the peak of a serious mental breakdown and a furious five-month old baby who seemingly hated me and everything I did, pretending virtual Sing and Sign classes counted as valuable human interaction and celebrating my 30th birthday alternating between sitting silently in the living room while the baby napped on me and having Zoom calls with friends while trying not to cry on camera about how much I missed them - you think I was going to do anything even approaching healthy and eat the fruit on its own? Fuck, no. I drowned it in caramel and covered in it cake and ate it warm with ice-cream on top, and for both the time I spent baking it and eating it, I was distracted from how shit reality was. Most people turned to sourdough and banana bread to keep their hands, minds and tastebuds too busy to contemplate the world outside their kitchen; for me, it was upside-down cake in as many forms as I could think up.
It started with pineapple upside-down cake. Then orange and pineapple upside-down cake. Lemon and pineapple upside-down cake. Ginger and pineapple upside-down cake. Rosemary and pineapple upside-down cake. One week we didn’t get pineapple rings but we did get a couple of oranges, so I made a chocolate orange upside-down cake which was, as expected, absolutely delicious and completely overpowering. Turns out putting together three flavours as potent as chocolate, orange and caramel together is a bit of a sensory overload. Who could have guessed? Not me. I also didn’t care enough to not eat the whole thing anyway, in huge slices after dinner, in stolen slivers as a snack, and sometimes just by pinching some off the corner and slipping it into my mouth as I walked past. It was a very intense cake, in the best way.
The original recipe I messed about with to make all of these cakes was actually for a pear upside-down cake, written by James Morton (runner up of GBBO S3, the lovely Scottish doctor with the excellent arms) for his marvelous book How Baking Works. Even so it took me years to make the cake with pears rather than pineapples, until the glut of them that I’d bought for my pear-loving new baby were starting to spoil in the fruit bowl and I needed to use them up all at once.
I’d not made an upside-down cake in years, not since the food parcels from the government had stopped. I had moved house, had another baby and changed careers since then but it still felt eerily familiar, getting all my ingredients and my springform tin out and realising that I was once again in a period of life where it was helpful to keep my hands and mind busy to distract myself from life outside of my kitchen. In keeping with that spirit, I decided to make things even more labour-intensive and make crystallised ginger to stir through the cake: it’s hard to worry about things when you’ve got to keep a close eye on boiling sugar.
I love making this cake - it’s incredibly soothing. I love the alchemy of turning butter and sugar to caramel, pouring it thickly into the base of a lined tin and nestling chunks of fruit in it, the dark liquid oozing up around the pale pears. I love the batter itself - it’s thick and white and smells like making cakes with your mum/my second-oldest brother/other primary caregiver on a rainy Saturday afternoon. I love smoothing the batter out so it’s level and sliding it into the oven, I love the clunk as I unclip the springform tin, the thud of cake on the plate as I flip it over, the crinkle of the baking parchment as I carefully peel it off to reveal the pattern of fruit underneath.
And I love eating it. The caramel drips down the sides of the cake, and soaks the sponge so it’s all soft, juicy and flavourful. The cake itself is fluffy and crumbly in a good way, so you get the contrast of the gooey, chewy caramelised fruit at the top with the light, springy sponge at the bottom. And it tastes good. Really good. Taron loves lemon so I really amped up the amount of zest in the recipe, and now no part of eating it is bland: lemony cake, caramelised pear topping, the occasional delicious punch of ginger - which I say as someone who doesn’t really like ginger! But it melts into the cake beautifully, making it sweet and spicy rather than overwhelming and sharp. I made this cake twice in a week recently, and both times it was devoured within a day or two by adults and kids, ginger and non-ginger lovers alike.
The path to this recipe started with Garry being on immunosuppressants and getting food parcels because of it. Quite fitting, then, that you could argue this cake is decent remedy for all the colds he’s going to pick up this winter because of them: the lemon is full of vitamin C, the ginger will soothe his coughs and sore throats, and apparently pears are used in Chinese medicine to help improve lung health. A rare case of something in life coming neatly full circle, and much appreciated in a messy, chaotic world.
Crystallised Ginger (plus ginger tea and ginger syrup)
Ingredients
One medium-large piece of fresh root ginger
About 500g of granulated sugar
Method
Peel the ginger and cut it into thin slices. Put it in a large saucepan, cover well with water (about two finger-widths higher than the top of the ginger) and boil gently, uncovered, for 15 minutes
Drain the water into a jug - you have ginger tea that will keep for three days in the fridge
You now need to add a mix of granulated sugar and water to the pot, with one part water to two parts sugar - I used a mug of water and two mugs of sugar. Stir well until the sugar has dissolved, bring to the boil, and let it simmer gently for 15 minutes, or until the liquid has decreased by about half
Drain the liquid into a jar - you have a ginger syrup that will keep in the fridge for two weeks
Put the ginger slices on a cooling rack to cool for two hours. Then toss them in sugar to coat, then leave them to harden overnight
Store in a jar or sealed container for two weeks, or in the fridge for two months
Use in recipes, or just eat them as they are
Of course if you don’t want to make your own crystallised ginger, just buy some from the shop and use them in your cake instead. No judgement here, and it’s not like the homemade stuff will taste significantly better. Life is too short to make crystallised ginger if it’s not going to make you happy, you know?
Lemon, Ginger and Pear Upside-Down Cake - 10 generous servings
Ingredients
For the topping
100g unsalted butter
The juice of 1 lemon
200g caster sugar
A pinch of salt
30g flaked almonds
4 medium pears
For the cake
250g unsalted butter
250 golden caster sugar
4 medium eggs
75g Greek yogurt
The zest of 1 large lemon
260g self-raising flour
A teaspoon of baking powder
80g crystallised ginger, roughly chopped
Method
Take a 9-inch, springform cake tin and clip it closed. Tear off a big piece of baking parchment and push it into the tin so it completely covers the bottom of the tin but comes a good way up the sides, too. Grease any of the sides not covered by parchment
Make the topping first. Melt the butter, lemon juice, salt and caster sugar together in a pan, stirring constantly. As soon as it’s melted, pour it into the cake tin. It shouldn’t drip out of the tine, the baking parchment should keep it all contained. Scatter the almonds evenly over the top of this
Chop the top and bottoms off the pears, and peel them. Slice them thinly, then arrange them over the top of the almonds and caramel. I usually end up with about two layers of pear here
Preheat the oven to 170C/150C Fan/Gas Mark 3
Make the cake. Using an electric whisk or beater, beat the butter and sugar together until very pale and light - about 5 mins. If you don’t have an electric whisk, get someone with a very strong arm to do the same
Beat in the eggs one at a time, and then stir through the yogurt and the lemon zest. Fold in the flour and baking powder until just combined, and finally stir through the crystallised ginger. You should have a beautifully thick, soft cake batter
Spoon the cake batter over the pears and bake for 45-60 minutes, until a knife poked into the centre comes out clean. Leave to cool for 15 minutes, then slide a knife round the outside of the cake/inside of the tin and turn out in one smooth motion onto a plate. Unclip the tin and carefully remove the baking parchment. Just slot any errant pears back in place, no-one will notice/care, and if they do and make a shitty comment then don’t give them any cake
Notes
I appreciate the irony that I don’t actually like ginger and I made a cake where ginger is one of the main ingredients, but shush
I also appreciate the irony in my not liking ginger (the flavour) while spending a fair amount of time, money and effort making my hair ginger (the colour) but again - shush
You don’t have to add the flaked almonds if you don’t want to. You know I’m a big texture girl so like the crunch against the squidgy fruit and soft, springy cake, but it is delicious without
A tablespoon or two of finely diced thyme leaves in the batter would also be lovely, but I’d probably remove the ginger if you did that in case it all got a bit overpowering
You won’t get a perfectly flat side of your cake if you put the baking parchment in like I do. If a perfectly straight, flat side is important to you then only line the base of the cake tin with parchment, and put the tin on a baking tray before you pour the caramel in and when putting it in the oven to catch any caramel drips. It’s also doubly important to run a knife around the outside of the cake while it’s still warm before you release it from the tin, all the way from top to bottom
This tastes good warm or cold. If you have it warm, a dollop of creme fraiche, whipped double cream or ice-cream is lovely
Things I like
Janina is one of those people I know who is so cool I can’t believe she deigns to spend time with me, and also so kind and wise that I feel like I’ve been touched by a benevolent goddess whenever we interact. She has also started a newsletter. You’re reading this, so you probably like newsletters, so you should subscribe.
As I said, the recipe for this cake was based on James Morton’s one for Vanilla and Pear Upside-Down Cake from his excellent book How Baking Works, which is the second best cookbook to come out of GBBO. The best, however, is the original, The Great British Book of Baking. A thick, weighty book with lots of background info on baking (both culturally and scientifically) and a shed load of traditional British recipes. It’s a fiver on World of Books. Treat yourself.
I posted this very bad photo of my new (to me, from Vinted) dress on Instagram Stories on Friday and people were very complimentary. It was made by Joanie and although the space print dress is only available in a few sizes, they have two floral prints of the same dress available in loads of sizes. I absolutely ADORE this other Joanie space dress, but alas, they don’t have it in my size either. We can be sad about that together. And I’ll keep scouring Vinted.
That’s it for this week. Thank you for keeping on reading - I hope you’re okay. Tits out, chin up, you can do this.
Love, Amy xxx