I made this raspberry marshmallow upside-down cake today — the exact one pictured here. I dusted it with some powdered sugar — both for the photo op and cause I like it — scooped out a generous spoonful and dribbled it with a bit of heavy cream. Then I ate it. And peeps, it was pretty over-the-top amazing. Like maybe the best thing I’ve ever eaten. NOT KIDDING and NOT EXAGGERATING. Something about the combo of the warm fluffy yellow cake, covering a thick oozy layer of tart, slightly sweetened raspberries and, brace yourself, caramelized melted marshmallows (!!!) made me completely ballistic. In a good way.
Truth be told, if I hadn’t spent the weekend at my niece’s wedding, partying perhaps a tad too hard for a 47-year-old mom, I would have gone back for more (my desire to detox — at least today— won out over my desire to eat the entire cake). And, you know, my resident taste-testers will thank me for saving them some, as this is one of those desserts that will please the one with the uber-sweet tooth who basically enjoys everything (love him), and the one who has been known to stop mid-dessert, push his plate away and tell me it’s just too sweet. He’d be fired if he required a salary.
I’m not going to spend a ton of time telling you about how this cake came to be, but I will tell you this: I first read about an upside-down cake with fruit and marshmallows on Edible Living, like a super long time ago, and I am the kind of person (you may have already figured this out) who reads about a cake calling for marshmallows as an ingredient and gets incredibly excited (as opposed to those who kind of get grossed out). A bit of googling revealed that back in the day, there was a marshmallow cake made with rhubarb and strawberry jello that was awfully popular. Then, lo and behold, I discovered said cake (without the jello) in one of my vintage recipe booklets (“250 Classic Cake Recipes”) from 1940. This is a long way of saying that this cake is a classic, or should become one, or at least is one in my book.
It is super easy to make (the cake is a riff on my lemon velvet cake, minus the lemon, obvs) and super delicious. I am planning on watching the cake disappear tonight and already have plans for making another one tomorrow that I plan to share with my book club. And here’s the thing about this cake: I think you could sub out the raspberries with almost any fruit you so desire (although raspberries are spectacular in it). You could use rhubarb (a la the classic), or bananas, as I have done and plan on devoting an entire separate post to, or mixed berries or maybe even apples . . . you get the picture.
So, give this cake a whirl (if you’re cool with the whole marshmallow in a cake thing). It’s kind of the perfect, easy weeknight (or any time of day or night) dessert and it’s kind of a crowd pleaser — like beyond.
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6 replies on “Raspberry Marshmallow Upside-Down Cake”
Made the raspberry marshmallow upside down cake yesterday for a party. Winner!!! Thank you!
So excited to hear, that! Yay! Including a recipe for that in my new cookbook, as it is actually an “old-fashioned recipe!”
Made the raspberry marshmallow upside down cake yesterday for a party. Winner!!! Thank you!
So excited to hear, that! Yay! Including a recipe for that in my new cookbook, as it is actually an “old-fashioned recipe!”
Made the raspberry marshmallow upside down cake yesterday for a party. Winner!!! Thank you!
So excited to hear, that! Yay! Including a recipe for that in my new cookbook, as it is actually an “old-fashioned recipe!”