Pecan Praline Upside Down Cake

Pecan Praline Upside Down Cake

You might say this Pecan Praline Upside Down Cake is the brainchild of necessity.

When I found myself with last minute dinner guests and a few obstacles standing in the way of an impressive dessert, I had to get inventive. 

When your friends want cake in the middle of summer and you don’t want to fire up the big oven and heat up the whole kitchen what can you do?  If you’ve got a toaster oven you can make a single layer cake. 

Since upside down cakes are typically single layer cakes anyway I thought this gooey pecan praline cake would be a perfect choice. 

Now for my second problem, I had also run out of granulated sugar. 

Who runs out of sugar?     

Don’t judge.  I swear this is the first time it’s happened in all of my four decades in the kitchen.  To overcome the lack of sugar I decided to grab the Bob’s Red Mill gluten free muffin mix I had on the pantry shelf.  Don’t kid yourself folks.  Muffins are essentially cake without the frosting anyway.

The end result was delicious indeed.    

This might just be the best idea I've come up with all year.

Pecan Praline Upside Down Cake

Prep Time: 15 min

Bake Time: 40-45 min

Servings: 8-12

Cake Ingredients

• 1 lb package of Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free muffin mix
• 1 cup milk
• ½ cup vegetable oil
• 2 eggs
• ¼ tsp cinnamon
• 1 apple peeled and grated

Pecan Praline Ingredients

• 1/4 cup butter, melted (1/2 stick)
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 6 oz pecans (1 ½ cups)

Video Tutorial: 

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 °F (or 190 °C) line the bottom of a 9 inch round cake pan with parchment sprayed with nonstick spray.
2. To make the pecan praline layer stir together the brown sugar, melted butter and cream until well mixed then stir in the pecans.
3. Pour the mixture into the prepared pan and spread evenly over the bottom. 
4. To make the batter, pour the muffin mix into a bowl, make a well in the center and add the milk, oil, eggs, cinnamon and apple then mix until well combined.
5. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 40-45 minutes or until the cake is golden brown and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
6. Let it cool in the pan for 5 minutes then invert onto a serving dish.  Serve warm or at room temperature.