Kitchen Cats: Cherry Upside Down Cake

For his first Father's day, I was planning to make my hubby's favorite carrot cake. But to my surprise, instead he requested this Cherry Upside Down Cake in this month's issue of Cooking Light. So we headed to the store to buy a cherry pitter (my favorite new kitchen tool) and a bag of cherries.

It was two years ago to the date that my hubby proposed to me during a hot, uphill run entering Piedmont Park. Shortly after that he headed to Hawaii and returned with a pineapple, which I turned into pineapple upside down cake. Very fitting that two years later we had another winning upside down cake!

Cherry Upside Down Cake
2 Tbsp melted butter
1/3 cup brown sugar
4 cups pitted, fresh cherries
6.75 oz (1.5 cups) all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup granulated sugar
6 Tbsp butter (softened)
3 Tbsp canola oil
1/5 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk (fat-free or low-fat)

Preheat to 350.
Coat 9" or 10" springform pan with cooking spray and line the bottom with parchment paper. Coat parchment paper with cooking spray. Wrap the outside and bottom of the pan tightly with aluminum foil to prevent leakage of cherry juices.
Drizzle melted butter into bottom of pan. Sprinkle pan with brown sugar. Arrange cherries in single layer over brown sugar. Place pan on a foil-lined baking sheet.
Combine flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda.
Beat granulated sugar, butter, and oil with a mixer on medium speed, about 3 minutes. Beat in vanilla. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Add flour mixture and buttermilk alternately to the butter mixture.
Spread batter over cherries in pan. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.
Decrease oven temperature to 325 and baking for another 25-30 minutes. Cool in pan for 10 minutes then invert onto a plate.

(Note, I baked for 30+25 minutes, and the center of my cake was a little underdone.)