Easy Orange Upside-Down Snacking Cake

Although, let's be honest: isn't ALL cake "snacking cake" these days?

Hi Friends,

We’ve been hitting you with a lot of soup lately, and while it’s undeniably still soup season, for the next four years (longer if we slip into an autocracy) we’re going to need some good CAKE recipes on hand to see us through¹. Although supermarket sheet cakes will always have a special place in our hearts, we’re also interested in cake that is not entirely devoid of nutrition. Enter: this easy upside-down orange cake made with a trio of nutritious (and incidentally gluten-free) whole grain flours, coconut sugar, and seasonal fruit. Not too sweet, not too decadent, and infused with fruity flavor, this cake delivers on the promise to be just cake-like enough for younger, less adventurous eaters, while sacrificing none of the wholesomeness we look to achieve in writing recipes for our families.

The texture is a bit like the love child of a pound cake and light cornbread, which makes it feel somehow suitable for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or, indeed, snacking. What, exactly, makes a cake fit for snacking? Our friend

Yossy Arefi

—who has a fantastic Substack of her own—has devoted the pages of an entire book to the subject. If you like to bake, this book is for you. You can check out Snacking Cakes here. In the meantime, try this Easy Orange Upside-Down Cake. It’s one of the best things we’ve whipped up lately.

Fanny + Greta

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This cake is inspired by the Chez Panisse upside-down cakes that Fanny grew up eating: light, buttery yellow cakes whose tops were studded with seasonal fruits—cherries, plums, apricots, cranberries, pineapple, orange, etc.—in a layer of caramel. The beauty of the fruit, laid out in patterns like stained glass windows, was the main attraction, but the cake itself was a close second.

This cake—shockingly, given the absence of caramel, gluten and refined sugar—is a fantastic dupe. Made with millet, cornmeal and almond flour and sweetened only with coconut sugar, it still feels decadent (thanks, butter!) and fruity without being cloying. While oranges are a great winter fruit to use for this cake, virtually any fruit in any season would work well for this: strawberries, blueberries, pears, whatever!