Recipe for Tricia

My dear friend Tricia has just phoned up and asked for the recipe for my Blackberry and Apple Upsidedown Cake. With over 200 cookery books and dozens of magazines, my first reaction was to panic. With good reason - 'cos I haven't found it yet. So I will have to fall back on Margeurite Patten (who taught me to cook with her book "Perfect Cooking".) Here is a variation on her Pineapple Upsidedown Cake:

For the topping, take:

2 good sized cooking apples, peeled, cored and sliced
4 oz blackberries
2 tablespoons of demerara sugar

Grease well your cake tin, and place blackberry and apple mixture on base and sprinkle with sugar.

For the sponge:

5 oz margarine or butter
5 oz sugar
2 eggs
6 oz S-R flour
few drops vanilla essence
3 tablespoons milk

Cream together the butter and sugar until soft and light. Whisk the eggs well and beat gradually into the butter mixture. Sieve the flour, and add the vanilla essence to the milk. Add flour and milk alternately into the creamed mixture. Pour over the fruit base in the tin and bake in the centre of a very moderate oven, Gas Mark 3-4, 325-350 deg. F. for about an hour. Serve hot or cold with cream (or be decadent - ice-cream!)