Remember upside down cake?

C'mon. If you're old enough, of course you do. Sweet, sometimes so hot it would burn your mouth, slices of warm pineapple (it was always pineapple, wasn't it?), usually too big to swallow whole, leaving a wonderful, sweet mess on your plate. With ice cream, the perfect dessert. It was one of those desserts even Moms who didn't know how to cook, knew how to make.

What happened to it? It seems that, for a while, it simply disappeared from sight. You couldn't buy one, you couldn't get it in a restaurant, or even a coffee shop. Coffee shops, those bastions of those wonderful mile high meringues, and all the other desserts we cannot forget (even if we don't want to remember them), AND NO UPSIDE DOWN CAKE!!!!

Well, Peter Allen, the much lamented and missed singer, had a song with the line (and I think the title): "Everything Old is new again." And in cooking, that sure is the truth. Wait long enough, and things come back. Of course, if certain things never came back again, I'd be happy. But upside down cake is making a reappearance in restaurants, in magazines, in cookbooks, EVERYWHERE.

And they sure seem to have made it much harder than it is. And they sure make it sound like if you don't have a cast iron skillet, somehow you're a defective cook and you'll never do it right. And they also seem to imply that if you make it with pineapple, especially - GASP - canned pinapple- you're as backwards as backwards can be.

Well, they can all get over it. I'm going to try to lead you through upside down cake. Make it once. If you don't eat it all (and you're entitled to eat it all, let me tell you), share it, and then make it again.

You can make an upside down cake with any fruit you like. You do have to keep in mind that liquid is going to leave the fruit during baking, so you probably don't want to use a very wet juicy fruit like an orange, or a lemon. SLICED with their peel on, they make wonderful upside down cakes. Just don't section them. And while I have never made one with a banana, I'm thinking now "why not?"

First, let's get to the equipment you need and don't need. You DON'T need a cast iron pan. What you need is a good quality, nine inch cake pan. Get the best you can afford You'll use it again for other things. Put the pan directly on the flame of a burner, together with 4 tablespoons of unsalted butter and 3/4 of a cup of sugar. One of the brown sugars, light or dark, is best, but if those flavors are too strong for you, use white. Just know it won't be as "burnished" as the ones you remember. Stir these around. The sugar will melt into the butter, and you'll get a wonderful coating, without the need to make caramel. Move the pan to a heat proof surface, and now add your fruit.

I can't give you quantities here, but I CAN say, use more than you think you need. As I said, the fruit is going to shrink, and one of the dramatic things about an upside down cake is that covering of cooked, soft, sugar coated fruit. I used cranberries to make two this afternoon. I needed a twelve ounce bag for each one. Figure accordingly for apples, pears, etc. Like I said, you'll want a lot. Just cover the whole surface of the sugar/butter mixture. If you want to get fancy , go ahead (I love using cranberries because I don't have to get fancy. They just sort of form their own pattern). Now put this aside while you make your cake batter.

If I see one more over the top upside down cake batter, I will lose it. This is minimalist, and it's about as good as it gets. You want to mix up a stick of softened, unsalted butter, and a cup of white sugar. Mix them really, REALLY well, and then put in some flavoring. Here, trust your taste buds. Blueberries? I'd say lemon and vanilla. Cranberries? Ain't no question: orange and vanilla. Bananas? Rum. Peaches? Hell, I'd leave it alone. You get the idea. Stir that in, and then add two large eggs , one at a time.

Off to the side, have a cup and a half of all purpose flour with two teaspoons of baking powder, and a pinch of salt. Also, have half a cup of some kind of liquid dairy. Whole milk, yogurt, sour cream, ricotta, etc. Combine one half of the flour mixture with the butter, and then all of the milk. Then stir in the rest of the flour. You will have a thick, lovely yellow cake patter, that you will have to spoon over the fruit, and smooth, very carefully, to get a nice surface.

Put the pan in a 375 degree oven and look at it after about half an hour. The standard 'straw down the middle' test doesn't work, because you've got moist fruit and sugar going. So you have to wait until the surface is beautifully dark gold. When you have that, the cake is ready.

Okay, now is the one time you have to be really, really careful. You're going to invert this cake onto a plate and you're working with very hot, dangerous things: the only thing that burns worse than hot fruit is hot caramel, and you've got them both in the cake. So make sure you're gloved, far up your arms. Get a plate that is bigger than your pan and put it over the top of the pan. Then, very carefully, pick the whole thing up in your gloved hands (after you've run a knife around the perimeter of the cake), and flip it over. Shake it gently. You'll hear, and feel a soft "plop" as the cake comes out.

Inevitably, some of the fruit sticks to the pan. Just scrape it off and put it back on the cake. With these, at least you know where to put the "fixmeup."

Why not try with the standard pineapple and move on to something else? I'm sure you're gonna love it.

Happy New Year to everyone. We'll be eating this with lots of other desserts tomorrow, and I promise to tell everyone about all the goodies we put away at our annual party