Ingredients:
2 cups peeled, sliced nectarines (from about 3-4 nectarines)
2-3 tablespoons demerara sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 cup nectarine puree*
1/4 cup water
2 tablespoons canola oil (plus some to grease the pan)
1 1/4 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla paste
1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. Sprinkle the demerara sugar over the bottom of the pan, top with a single layer of nectarine slices. Set aside. In a medium bowl, mix together the liquid ingredients. Beat in the sugar. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Slowly mix the dry ingredients in with the wet. Lightly oil the bottom and sides of a heavy duty 8 inch baking pan. Top the sliced nectarines with cake batter. Smooth the cake batter to all of the edges and make sure no nectarines are peeking out. Bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool completely, then invert to serve.

*Make this yourself in a blender. If you have a high powered blender like a Vita-Mix, leave the skins on. I used 2 nectarines to make 1 cup puree.

My thoughts:

If you follow me on instagram you might have seen a sneak peek of this recipe over the weekend! I swear this recipe is just as good as it looks. Maybe even better.

I love peach upside down cakes because the top (even if made with not the sweetest, most ripe peach in the world) gets super sweet in a fresh, natural tasting way and the cake just under the peaches gets sort of custardy. Peaches are pretty great but do you know what fruit I like even more than peaches? Nectarines! No itchy fuzz to contend with.

I wanted to make a dessert to bring to our friends’ house and it needed to be vegan. Vegan baking is always a little tricky for me because I don’t have things like vegan margarine, egg replacer or soy (or other non-dairy) milk on hand and I hate buying ingredients that I probably won’t end up again just for one recipe. So I decided to swap out the dairy (and egg) with nectarine puree (which also provided extra nectarine flavor to the cake) and baking powder and hope for the best. My gamble paid off! The cake was moist and delicious.