Experimenting with Upside Down Cake - This Time with Green Apples, and It's Low Sugar

After having the apple and vege salad the other day, I was planning on making some apple crumble with the remaining green apples but changed my mind and thought I'd have another food adventure today. Quite a while ago I made a pear upside down cake instead of the usual pineapple one due to having too many overripe pears lying around. Perhaps I could try it with the apples with the same recipe, but only this time I've reduced the sugar further to 80g.

Ingredients:

For the batter -
200g flour
200g unsalted butter
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
80g fine brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
6 tablespoons milk

For the base -
3 green apples, cored and sliced, cooked in boiling water for about 8 minutes, drain and set aside
60g golden syrup (I'm still doing this cheat, so much easier)
5 glacé cherries, cut into halves

Preparation:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C.
2. Grease an 8" square glass baking dish.
3. Pour the golden syrup into the dish, heat in the oven for 2-3 minutes. Remove from the oven and tilt the dish around to spread the syrup evenly, all the way to half way up the side of the dish.
4. Arrange the cooked apple slices at the bottom and place half a glacé cherry in the hole of each apple ring.
5. Sift the flour together with the baking powder.
6. Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl, until fluffy. Gradually beat in the eggs and vanilla essence, mix well, then slowly fold in the flour and milk till the mix is smooth.
7. Pour the mixture into the baking dish, and level the surface.
8. Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until golden. To test, insert a skewer into the centre. It should come out clean if it's done. I've reduced baking time as the dish I'm using is a lot wider, hence a thinner batter. With my oven, it actually was done at about 30 minutes.
9. Leave to cool in the dish for 30 minutes.
10. Upturn the cake onto a shallow dish. To make it easier to come off, I just lightly shake it a few times right to left then front to back.

There is some leftover cooked apple slices, which I mashed into an airtight container to make apple puree for future use: to make apple sauce or spread over pork when roasting.

To my surprise, it tastes fine though the apple became a little on the soft side and quite hard to handle. If I ever want to bake this again I may try to cook the apples over shorter time, or make ahead my own apple in syrup which might help keeping the apple slices more intact.