Starfruit Upside Down Cake

My boyfriend's favorite fruit is starfruit. I had never really had one until we started dating. They are actually pretty mild-tasting, like a combination of a pear, a grape, and an apple with the consistency of an orange. Hard to explain.. but good! His birthday was yesterday and I surprised him with this upside cake I found after a long google session.

The ingredients called for passionfruits, and being in New Hampshire it's pretty obvious that this is something I don't see every day. I found them at Hannaford luckily. I had no idea what I was doing when I juiced these bad boys but I did the best I could. What a WEIRD texture!

I scooped out the insides of the passionfruits with a spoon and juiced them by hand. I used the edge of the peeler to get the seeds out of the star shapes (I did miss a few though!)

Star Fruit Upside Down Cake (from http://www.nikibone.com/recipe/fruit/starfruit.html)

3 to 4 star fruit, sliced

1/4 cup butter, melted
2/3 cup dark brown sugar
juice of 2 passion fruit

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups cake flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon each of vanilla and almond extract

Preheat oven to 350F. Arrange sliced star fruit in bottom of a greased 9 inch cake pan as close together as possible. Mix together 1/4 cup butter, brown sugar and passion fruit juice and pour into pan, turning so mixture covers bottom. Set aside.

Cream together 1/2 cup of butter and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beat well. Mix together dry ingredients. Add flour mixture, alternately with milk, to butter mixture. Stir in vanilla and almond extracts. Pour into prepared cake pan. Bake for approximately 30 minutes or until cake pulls away form sides of pan. Let cool for five minutes before inverting onto serving plate.

8 servings

It was not what I expected.. it turned out to be a really dense cake, but it was so, so good! We had it with scoops of rainbow sherbet :) Mmmm