If you, like me, are also in your blueberry obsessive phase – then I invite you to obsess over this Upside-Down Blueberry Cake with me. It’s delicate, moist and filled with lemon flavor, but surprisingly not even close to overpowering. It’s the perfect way to enjoy blueberries at a summer gathering since it’s a showstopper. The top is glossy with lemony blueberries, and the bottom is nice and soft with a pillowy-moist cake. The only thing that could make this blueberry cake better is a big scoop of ice cream, which in the summer, shouldn’t be too hard to come by!
Table of contents
- Let’s talk about this Upside-Down Blueberry cake
- Ingredients you will need for this Blueberry Cake
- How does this cake taste so lemony without lemon juice in the actual batter?
- How to prepare the Blueberry Upside-Down Cake
- Tricks on flipping an upside-down cake
- What is ginger sugar?
- Looking for other blueberry baking recipes?
- Why is this recipe in grams?
- Watch the recipe here
Let’s talk about this Upside-Down Blueberry cake
This blueberry cake lives happily among other upside-down cakes – from pineapple to peach, apple and everywhere in between. I prefer blueberry upside-down cakes because of their vibrant color, but also because we don’t have to candy the blueberries before baking. All they need is a quick toss in sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest and ginger, then it’s ready to bake into the glossy, upside-down, top layer!
Ingredients you will need for this Blueberry Cake
- 3 large eggs
- 187 grams low-fat yogurt or skyr
- 165 grams granulated sugar, 3/4 cup
- 63 grams dark brown sugar, 1/2 cup
- 150 grams olive oil, 3/4 cup
- 210 grams all-purpose flour, 1 1/2 cups
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon lemon zest
- 1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
For the blueberries
- 350 grams frozen blueberries, 3 cups
- 50 grams granulated sugar, 1/4 cup
- 1 teaspoons lemon zest, plus more for topping the cake
- 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice, about 1/2 lemon
- 1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
For the ginger sugar
- 50 grams turbinado sugar, 1/4 cup
- 1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
How does this cake taste so lemony without lemon juice in the actual batter?
This is a great question! And it’s one of my favorite tips and tricks of the baking trade. Lemon juice in cakes can actually make their texture incredibly finicky. Lemon juice is obviously highly acidic, so it interacts with leaveners such as baking powder and baking soda in an intense way. This can cause cakes over rising and collapsing in the middle, cakes to dry out too quickly, and it can also cause an overall acrid flavor if the lemon juice reacts with baking soda too quickly. So, I try to avoid lemon juice in my bakes – for lack of a better pun, the juice is not worth the squeeze for me.
However, blueberries carry lemon flavor amazingly well, and since this is a Blueberry Upside-Down Cake, we coat them in sugar and lemon juice right before baking. The lemon juice seeps down into the cake, giving both the blueberries and the cake a pleasant and perfectly balanced lemony flavor!
How to prepare the Blueberry Upside-Down Cake
Set a rack to the center of the oven and preheat to 350°F.
Whisk together the eggs. Add the yogurt and sugars and mix well. Whisking constantly, gradually drizzle in the olive oil to create a smooth emulsion.
Add in the flour, baking powder and salt. Whisk until smooth. Add in the lemon zest and ginger and mix again. Set aside.
In another bowl, toss the blueberries with the sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice and ginger.
To a greased 9-inch round cake pan, layer the bottom with parchment paper. Layer the blueberries out in an even layer, pressing them as closely together as possible so the batter doesn’t break through.
Gently pour in the batter. Bake for 50-55 minutes at 350°F or until you can insert a toothpick and it comes out clean.
Tricks on flipping an upside-down cake
The important part of an upside-down cake is preserving its beautiful, gorgeous fruit on top. This is incredibly important with blueberries since they are small and prone to escaping. I have a few main tricks when flipping an upsidedown cake:
- Let the cake completely cool – this is the most important step! You can flip a warm cake, but at what cost, y’know?
- Line the pan with parchment paper on the bottom, but not the sides – this helps the fruit ease onto the parchment paper, and then you can just peel it off.
- Use a knife to loosen the sides before flipping – it might seem obvious, but it helps a ton!
- And lastly, go slow and be gentle – it’s tempting to rip it off like a bandaid, but use a gentle hand for the best chance of all your fruit in an upside-down cake to stay intact!
What is ginger sugar?
Ginger sugar is my favorite part of this cake. It almost melts into the blueberries, giving a glossy top and a texture that reminds me of cinnamon toast, if your mom ever made something like that!
But ginger sugar is just where you mix fresh ginger in with turbinado sugar. Turbinado sugar is a large-grain, coarse sugar, and it perfectly marries with grated ginger to make a new, aromatic kind of sugar.
You can just mix it though – you need to work in the ginger sugar with your hands, grinding it into the sugar so that the sugar cuts into the aromatics, letting them release their oils and create a fragrant, flavorful sugar. The more you rub the sugar in with your fingers, the more delicious it will be. By the time it’s ready for topping, it should have the texture of damp sand.
Looking for other blueberry baking recipes?
You’ve come to the right blog, I’m practically half-blueberry by now!
Here are a few of my favorites:
Why is this recipe in grams?
Baking is a very finicky and exact science. The only way to ensure complete accuracy is through measuring by weight, and not volume. As much as I wish I could give you multiple ways to measure ingredients, in this recipe measuring by cups might cause some volatility and miss-matched results. I want to ensure you get the best results with this recipe (and I want to keep this recipe fool-proof!) so I highly recommend getting a small affordable kitchen scale if you want to move forward with this particular recipe!
Plus, it saves dishes – get a small scale and live life in the fast lane 🙂
And that’s everything for this Upside-Down Blueberry Cake!
If you make it, please tag me on Pinterest or Instagram so I can see! It’s my favorite thing to scroll through stories and see what you all are making.
And of course feel free to leave any questions, comments or reviews! This is the best place to reach me, and I’d love to hear from you <3
Watch the recipe here
The video may not fully represent the recipe. For best results, follow the instructions as written.
Lemon Blueberry Upside-Down Cake
Equipment
- 1 9-inch cake pan
- 1 sheet of parchment paper
Ingredients
- 3 large eggs
- 187 grams low-fat yogurt or skyr
- 165 grams granulated sugar 3/4 cup
- 63 grams dark brown sugar 1/2 cup
- 150 grams olive oil 3/4 cup
- 210 grams all-purpose flour 1 1/2 cups
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon lemon zest
- 1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
For the blueberries
- 350 grams frozen blueberries 3 cups
- 50 grams granulated sugar 1/4 cup
- 1 teaspoons lemon zest plus more for topping the cake
- 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice about 1/2 lemon
- 1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
For the ginger sugar
- 50 grams turbinado sugar 1/4 cup
- 1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
Instructions
- Set a rack to the center of the oven and preheat to 350°F.
- Whisk together the eggs. Add the yogurt and sugars and mix well. Whisking constantly, gradually drizzle in the olive oil to create a smooth emulsion.
- Add in the flour, baking powder and salt. Whisk until smooth. Add in the lemon zest and ginger and mix again, set aside.
- In another bowl, toss the blueberries with the sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice and ginger.
- To a greased 9-inch round cake pan, layer the bottom with parchment paper. Layer the blueberries out in an even layer, pressing them as closely together as possible so the batter doesn't break through.
- Gently pour in the batter. Bake for 50-55 minutes at 350°F or utnil you can insert a toothpick and it comes out clean.
- Let the cake cool before flipping to reveal the top. Gently pull off the parchment paper and sprinkle the ginger sugar over top. Rub it gently into the berries to let it melt in.
- Top with more lemon zest and serve.
Best best best..
This recipe was fantastic and kid friendly! We replaced the ginger for more lemon zest and it was a big hit! Absolute winner. Loved it. Making it again tomorrow.
I’m so thrilled you liked it!!
Made this today for National Blueberry Month and loved it. My only change was that I did 1/2 avocado oil and 1/2 olive oil because I find olive oil very strong in cakes.
I made this cake changed a few things because I didn’t have and for kiddos taste palate, they’re not big fans of ginger.
I used 2 cups of fresh blueberries, plain kefir instead of yogurt,added vanilla instead of ginger and no ginger sugar, instead I just drizzled a little honey. Cake was delicious and didn’t last long.
Is there a step missing for pan preparations? I put parchment on the bottom but after about 20 minutes I noticed my oven smoking a little… blueberry /sugar juice had leaked all over the floor of my oven and was a bubbly black mess……
Did you use a spring-form pan? A 9 by 13 inch pan shouldn’t leak, but springforms tend to leak quite a bit with any high-moisture recipe!
Hi could I use any other lighter oils in this recipe please
Absolutely! Any neutral oil like canola or vegetable will work 🙂
Why do you use frozen blueberries instead of fresh? Would I need to make any adjustments if using fresh fruit?
Hi there! Yes, this is for frozen blueberries. I haven’t tested it with fresh, so I can accurately confirm if you need to change anything. However we’re having a third party test it this week and will get back to you!
Would love to hear this answer! Planning on making it this weekend with fresh blueberries
Hi! Do you need to defrost the blueberries?
You shouldn’t need to 🙂
Hello! Quicken question. Can I use FRESH blueberries instead of frozen in this recipe? If so, some amount and same baking time? Many thanks
Hi there! I haven’t tested it with fresh, so I can accurately confirm if you need to change anything. However we’re having a third party test it this week and will get back to you!
Any update on the fresh vs frozen berries? Thanks!
Hi, how do you store the cake – in the fridge? And will it keep a few days? Thanks!
Any suggestions on how I should make this GF without ruining it 😂
Ahhh I’m not a GF expert but my favorite sub is King Arthur Baking’s 1:1 blend – it will come out a bit crumblier, but I’ve had people have amazing luck!
I made this recipe with cup4cup gluten free multipurpose flour and it was amazing! Not dry or crumbly at all!
Hello, this looks delicious . Does the olive oil needs to be light olive oil or can I use extra virgin olive oil . Also Can I use avocado oil? Or virgin coconut oil?
Avocado oil will work! It can range from extra virgin olive oil to light, or any neutral oil will work. I’d just stay away from coconut since it bakes differently than seed oils.
Seems like it needs longer than 55 mins!
Baking times will always vary based off of how an oven is calibrated – I always recommend an oven thermometer, it’s changed my baking tenfold and will help in case this cake took you a bit longer in the oven. I hope it still turned out well though! And I’m glad you made it <3
Hello!
I don’t have a scale on hand, how much yogurt would be needed in cups? And any updates with using fresh blueberries? Thank you for these great recipes.
It truly depends on the brand! If the skyr is watery-er, it’s about 3/4 cup. If it’s thicker, use 2/3 cup 🙂
I used fresh blueberries and it turned out wonderfully!!
It was sooo delicious !!!
Looks delicious! Will definitely be giving this a try.
Also, do you mind sharing where you got those white speckled bowls? They are gorgeous.
Thanks!
Earthen! I believe I tagged their account on Instagram so you can find them 🙂
Any tips for not over mixing the batter once you add the flour in? I find that flour clumps up a lot and mixing it until smooth results in huge gluten ribbons in the middle
This recipe is everything you want in a summery dessert. I used fresh berries and it worked great. Thank you for sharing this recipe, it’s a keeper! So, so good!
I ended up needing to bake this for an extra 30ish minutes because the middle was still liquid. Any ideas on what I could have done wrong? I believe that I followed the recipe exactly, but I did you I pie dish instead of a cake pan. This looks delicious and I would like to try again with some success.
Thanks!
Hi there! For this, I’d definitely suggest using a cake pan. The shape of a pie dish, plus if it’s ceramic or glass, greatly impacts the baking time, since all baking dishes conduct and hold heat differently, so that’s probably what happened!
Can this cake be made with gluten free flour?
I personally haven’t tried it, but I always recommend King Arthur Baking’s GF 1:1 flour as my preferred sub!
Looks so yummy! I will try to make a vegan version.
Looks delicious!
Quick question though…why ginger in the sugar? How strong does the ginger taste in the cake?
Thanks.
Hi! I explain this in my video on Instagram but it adds a note of ginger to the sugar! It’s a nice hint of flavor and a beautiful aromatic 🙂 It’s just strong enough to be noticeable and it tastes like candied ginger.
Fresh blueberries worked great I just let them sit a bit after adding sugar to pull out the juice. For my palate I’d up the lemon juice next time but was fantastic and fresh! Great summer cake.
This cake is a special one. The gorgeous reveal of flipping it right side up and pulling away the parchment to reveal the blueberry topping does not disappoint! The cake is not overly sweet, especially due to the awesome amount of ginger, lemon zest (and juice) and blueberries! The only change I made was to replace the oil with half grape seed oil and half melted butter. YUM!
Best recipe ever! I made some minor adjustments based on items I had on hand (i.e. used a Bundt pan instead of a 9-inch cake which increased overall cook time by about 10-15 minutes, and I replaced yogurt with cottage cheese blended with a splash of heavy cream). Had the whole family and boyfriend impressed, and it was super easy to make!
This cake is absolutely delicious. I made it exactly as directed and it was perfect. The texture is so soft and moist and the blueberries add the perfect amount of sweetness. I was thinking I might add more lemon to the batter because it wasn’t super noticeable yesterday when it was fresh, but letting it sit overnight has changed my opinion! The lemon and ginger settled in and I think it’s even better today. Perfect to have with a strong cup of coffee. I will definitely be making this again!
First must say – delicious flavor and we love the ginger lemon with Blueberries. However –
I think I may have poorly handled the batter; I mixed it up just until before adding the oil and stopped to prep the berries. Then I went back to the oil stage and my whisk broke (!!) So I used my electric hand mixer while doing my best to drizzle the oil. Then tried to not overmix when adding the flour and aromatics.
Somehow my cake turned out rather dense, heavy – an almost pudding like texture.
I had a decent looking rise, toothpick came out clean, then after cooling it flattened out. Maybe it fell after the bake?
Not sure. After looking at your pics which has a nice looking crumb and mine is definitely different.
Flavor is A+ but would love some feedback on why my crumb flattened the way it did!
Thanks in advance!
Hi there! My first question would be about your oven actually – if you measured everything by weight, the one issue that might have weighed the batter down is an oven that’s calibrated a bit low, not giving the cake the proper time to set. My other concern would be baking powder that’s expired, or the use of baking soda instead of baking powder (which I doubt you’d do!). My last question would be for what kind of dish you cooked it in. If it was a classic baking tin, no issues there, but if you baked it in something porcelain or glass, that could explain the baking issue as well. And I’m sorry it didn’t work out, I never blame the user, and try to always look to where I could have gone wrong, so I hope some of these ideas might lead us to the right direction!
Can I use full fat yogurt instead of low fat? I don’t like the extra sugar and sodium in low/non fat options. Also, my store doesn’t carry low fat, only non fat and regular.
You can absolutely make the swap 🙂
This looks so delicious but could the eggs be replaced in this recipe?
At this time I don’t have a great sub for eggs in this, it’s a pretty heavy cake so flax eggs tend to weigh it down a touch.
Very nice – all the flavors worked well together! I assumed that I wasn’t thawing the blueberries since you didn’t say to and I was surprised to see toothpicks come out clean but still be well undercooked in the middle. I’ll know better for next time, which will be in three days!
Only adjustments I made were to use about 1/2 the ginger as I’m only a medium fan. For me, three teaspoons would have been too much. Also, I used a vanilla and a blueberry yogurt as that what’s I could easily find – seemed to workout just fine.
Hi, could mixed frozen berries be used instead of blueberries? Thanks
Hi! I haven’t personally tried it, so I can’t guarantee the result, but if you try it please report back. We’d love to know how it turns out!
Looks amazing! Can this be halved and made in a loaf pan instead? What would you do about the quantity of egg? Can’t wait to make!
Hi there! This is a particularly rich cake, so a loaf pan might impact the baking time and temp. I haven’t tested it myself, so I can’t guarantee exact adjustments, but if you try it please report back! I’d suggest keeping the egg amount the same, of course 🙂
Hi, I baked this cake and brought it to work. They absolutely love the flavor. However noticed when cutting into it, the cake was very dense. I followed the instructions to the tea. Do you know how I could prevent it from being dense the next time ?
Hi! This is meant to be a dense cake, almost loaf-like, since I don’t love it when my olive oil cakes come out overly dry. If you want it to be more fluffy, I’d suggest halving the skyr.
Lovely recipe! Can you share same recipe without eggs?
Hi there! So glad you liked it – I haven’t had the chance to test a version without eggs, but if I ever make an eggless olive oil cake I’ll circle back with a link for you!
This recipe was perfect! Saving this
in my cookbook! Could I use fresh-blueberries
I’m so glad you liked it! I haven’t used fresh blueberries and I worry they’d be a bit less vibrant in color, but if you try them please report back!
This upside down blueberry cake is amazing! All of the flavors together create an incredible flavor and it’s such an easy recipe. 10000% recommend!!
so excited to try this recipe! what would you recommend as a non dairy alternative to the yogurt?
I’ve had many people have great luck with coconut yogurt!
LOVE this recipe! I’ve made it 3 times in the last 2 weeks. A crowd fave. Thank you so much!