Upside-Down Cake, Apple

There's always an abundance of apples when it's Christmas.  And, while I am ready to try my mom's apple pie again, I'm waiting for a more leisurely time to do so... definitely after the "baking storm", which means not until next week, at least!

But I am okay with trying out something else with the apples... like an apple upside-down cake... or 2 small ones...

one for us and one for my mom...

As a child, apples were a great favorite.  But in the years that passed, apples became less and less of a favorite, except perhaps for my mom's apple pie, which only made an appearance once a year... yes, at Christmas time.

This cake, however, is sooooo delicious that it's got me eating apples again.  And I've had three slices already! 

I used to have a favorite recipe for upside down cake, a versatile one for almost any fresh fruit but I couldn't find it so I went looking for another one...  out of all the cookbooks I had, I chose a recipe from this book (image courtesy of Google images)...

The recipe is really for Pineapple Upside-Down Cake but I thought I could use apples instead of the pineapple.

Basically I followed the recipe, except...

1.  I used apples, of course!
2.  I used 2 smaller pans instead of 1 big pan
2.  I used all the schmear in the 2 smaller pans (it's really delicious, but I might have over-done it, seriously...).
3.  I sprinkled apple pie spice over the "schmear" before putting in apple slices.

By the way, I used Fuji apples... and they were still crunchy!

The recipe (and hence, the cake) was absolutely spectacular!  A tad bit sweet for me but otherwise, super yummy!!!  So from now on, this is my go-to upside down cake recipe!