Meyer Lemon Upside Down Cake

If my favorite time of year was based solely on the availability of citrus fruits, now would win hands down.  Forget summer's tomatoes and melons, you can't beat the burst of sweet, tangy juice in your mouth when you bite into an orange slice.  The selection of citrus at the grocery store has been pretty dang amazing lately.  I've been buying clementines by the dozen, 2 lb bags of blood oranges, and I was very excited to find a bag of Meyer Lemons on my last shopping trip.

Meyer lemons are a hybrid lemon mandarin mix, so basically a sweeter less sour lemon.  The first time I heard of the aforementioned Meyer lemon was when perusing marthastewart.com recipes.  I stumbled across a coffee cake recipe that incorporated whole slices (including the peel) of these sweet lil lemons.  I rushed out to try to find some of the mysterious fruits, but I had no luck.  I forgot about the recipe and life moved on, but that curiosity remained firmly planted in my food obsessed brain.  You can only imagine the excitement I experienced when I found meyer lemons at the grocery store.  When I bought them I didn't have a clear idea of what I would do with them.  I was sure I wouldn't be able to find the Martha Stewart recipe, but I knew I wanted to use them in some kind of cake.  Here is what I came up with.

-3-4 Meyer Lemons
-1/3 c. sugar
-1 tbsp molasses
-1/4 c. butter melted
-1 tbsp canola oil
-1 recipe pineapple upside down cake - only the cake part!!  No fruit or caramel mixture
     ***you could easily use boxed mix - I used a recipe from Ripe from Around Here by Jae Steale -
     ****Make sure your recipe is for a 9" circular cake pan or an 8"X8" square)

Slice your lemons into 1/4" slices using a sharp pairing knife.  Discard the ends.  Carefully remove all seeds.

In a small bowl mix together the sugar and the molasses.  Combine the two as best as you can.  It will clump up at first, but just keep working it until the molasses is almost evenly distributed.  Stir in the melted butter and canola oil.

Lightly oil cake pan. Make sure to use the correct size called for by your cake recipe.

Place Lemons in the Pan slightly overlapping each lemon with the previous.

Pour the sugar butter mixture evenly over the lemon slices.  Use a spoon to gently distribute the mixture without disturbing the lemon layout.

Prepare cake batter according to your specific recipe.

Pour cake batter in the pan over the lemons and sugar mixture.

Bake according to cake recipe

After baking the designated time, allow cake to cool in pan for 10 minutes.

Turn cake out onto plate.

Ta-DA!