Blueberry Upside down cake for Our Lady's birthday!!

Today is the Feast of the Birth Day of the Blessed Virgin Mary!  This morning when I told Clare that we were going to have a special cake for Mary's birthday she got excited then asked me, "Then Mary's going to come and we're going to have birthday cake!"  I had to let her know that Mary is really around all the time even though we can't see her.  I didn't think we'd have any miraculous apparitions tonight, though maybe if I'd let her think that, Mary would have come to see Clare!  Ha ha!  A mom can hope.

When Clare asked if we were going to put birthday candles on the cake, I said, "No because we don't really know how old Mary is".  Clare replied with "TWO!"  Apparently Clare shares her age with the Blessed Virgin.......and anyone else whose age comes into question.  Ha ha ha!

This is really the first feast day that we've celebrated in our house.  We've gone to Mass on the kid's namesake days, but other than that we didn't really do any party like celebrating.  While we didn't really have a party, having a birthday cake makes it seem like more of a celebration.  Before Jon and I were married we talked about wanting to take advantage of all the joy and celebration that comes with being a Catholic and really celebrating lots of feast days!  So finally, three and a half years later I made a cake to celebrate something!  Hopefully we can keep this up.

I found the recipe for this cake while scouring allrecipes.com this afternoon searching for a blueberry cake.  At first when I asked Jon his preference about the cake he said that he'd like blueberry pound cake.  After I told him how much butter was involved he switched his preference to this.  Ha ha!  This looked more interesting and birthday cake like to me anyways. 

I was tempted just to make some cupcakes at first and frost them with cream cheese frosting, but I wanted something blue-ish and I didn't want the cupcakes to end up tasting just like bluberry muffins with frosting on top.

I have been pretty scared of food coloring lately for 2 reasons. 
1.  I heard (and read) that some companies use fetal cells in food coloring.  Unethical and SCARY! 
2.  The last time I looked at a package of food coloring I noticed that methyl and propylparaben were ingredients.  I know from the cosmetics safety database that these are common ingredients in hand lotion that you want to avoid because they are carcinogenic.  So carcinogenic that they are outlawed in Europe. 
Ugh.  Gross.  Cancer causing preservatives in my cake?  No thanks.
So no bright blue cupcakes or cake for us today.  Blueberries it is!

I didn't even know that there were other upside down cakes besides pineapple, but there are tons!  Plum, Peach, Nectarine upside down cakes.  All sorts of upside down cakes. 
As you can tell, I'm a newbie to the upside down cake world.  This was my first attempt.  It might become an addiction it's so good.

If you want the recipe click HERE

The only thing I did differently was use frozen blueberries rather than fresh.  I know, you're thinking, "What the heck?  It's the middle of blueberry season and fresh blueberries are stinking cheap right now.  Why would she use frozen?"  I HAD to use frozen because when I went to Fred Meyer today to get blueberries for this special occaision there were none in the store!!  What the heck?  Yeah, I was annoyed.  So I reluctantly plucked out a bag of frozen organic blueberries from the freezer section.  Good thing they were discounted because I really didn't feel like dragging myself and the two kiddos to Central Market. 

So here are some pics of the process.

The frozen blueberries with sugar, flour, and lemon zest go on the bottom of your springform pan.

This is the lovely batter with almond extract and more lemon zest!

There was another recipe for blueberry plum upside down cake on allrecipes.com that looked pretty popular on the site, but this one won me over with the lemon.  There's lemon zest in the blueberry topping and in the actual cake batter.  There's also almond extract.  Excellent flavor combinations in my opinion.  I'm a sucker for lemon cakes.

The batter goes on top of the blueberry mixture in a springform pan and then into the oven.

Oh wait, I did another thing differently.  Some of the recipe reviewers said that the cake only needed 55 minutes to bake and not 70, so I took their advice and it came out perfectly moist in 55 minutes.

Voila!  55 minutes later it comes out beautifully done and makes your house smell fantastique!

I was too scared to flip the cake, so I made Jon do it.  Put a plate on top and carefully flip!

He did such a good job!

The finished product!

Even though she didn't make a miraculous apparition at our apartment tonight, I hope Mary enjoyed watching us eat the cake and was somehow miraculously able to partake in a vicarious way.  The cake was out of this world.  Clare didn't have too much, but she enjoyed singing Immaculate Mary and Happy Birthday to Mary tonight.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
"Father of mercy,
give your people help and strength from heaven. 
The birth of the Virgin Mary's Son
was the dawn of our salvation.
May this celebration of her birthday bring us closer to lasting peace.
Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.
(From today's liturgy of the hours).