Grape Harvest Cake

This cake comes from Mary over at One Perfect Bite and it's another winner! I have been wanting to try baking a grape cake since I had seen one a while back and this was the perfect time to try it.  It's really delicious.  My cake was a bit taller than Mary's and the grapes were not visible from the top, the cake baked over them, so it wasn't as pretty. However, I'm sure it was just as delicious.  We had this with some whipped cream over it.  You can try subsituting other fruits too.  I think that would work out fine. I am going to try this in another week or so using mango.  Should be interesting.  I love trying new recipes and find that there are very few I repeat because I'm always on search for the "next one" to try! 

We made our yearly trip up to Graves Mountain this past weekend and I have a ton of apples here.  Looking for some new recipes for them.  Hopefully I'll have lots of successes and be posting them soon!  In the meantime I highly recommend this cake!

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus more for buttering the pan


2/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon cane sugar

2 large eggs and 1 large egg yolk

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1-3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for flouring the pan

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

3/4 cup lowfat buttermilk

2-1/4 cups (3/4 pound) red seedless grapes



Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a 9-inch metal cake pan and line bottom with a round of parchment paper. Butter paper and then coat pan with flour.

2) In bowl of an electric mixer, cream together butter and 2/3 cup sugar until light and fluffy, stopping to scrape down sides of bowl frequently. Beat in eggs one at a time. Beat in yolk, followed by olive oil.

3) Sift together flour, baking powder and salt in separate bowl.

4) On low speed, beat in flour mixture in three additions, alternating with additions of buttermilk and scraping down sides of the bowl frequently. Stir in half the grapes and pour batter into prepared pan. Sprinkle top with remaining grapes and remaining 1 tablespoon sugar.

5) Bake until cake is browned on top and springs back when pressed lightly with your finger, 50 to 60 minutes. Cool the cake in the pan 15 minutes. Run a knife around the edges of pan, then invert, peel off paper and cool cake upright on a rack. Serve warm or room temperature. Yield: 12 servings.