Individual Blackberry Upside Down Cakes in the Air Fryer

Learn how to make this delicious summer dessert with fresh blackberries in your air fryer using 4-inch metal cake pans! The best moment is when you flip it upside down and take that first delicious bite!

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Who doesn't love an individual dessert? They are always cute and you get to eat the entire thing! Who doesn't like completing things?!

Why You Should Make This - Pineapple is what you normally see used for an upside down cake but there are so many other great options and I think blackberries might one of the best. The fruit contains enough pectin to jell really well creating the perfect topping that won't make the cake underneath soggy.

And in a small dessert like this every bite is full of delicious blackberry goodness.

Jump to:

• Ingredients
• How Many Cakes Does This Recipe Make?
• Why Use an Air Fryer?
• Instructions
• How to Remove the Cakes
• Air Fryer Upside Down Blackberry Cakes

Ingredients

Here is what you will need on hand to make these cake.

• 2 tbsp butter divided in half
• ¼ cup brown sugar
• ½ pint fresh blackberries
• 2.5 ounces all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ¼ tsp baking soda
• ¼ tsp kosher alt
• ⅓ cup pure cane sugar
• ½ up buttermilk
• ½ tsp vanilla extract

When I got the blackberries from a local farm stand they came in flats that were made of 6 half pints. A half pint is close enough to the normal size blackberry container you get in the grocery store. The ones that look like this:

Now I did get to try this recipe with some different kinds of blackberries. In July 2024 I was up in the Pacific Northwest where you can get marionberries and boysenberries. The marionberries broke down more than the boysenberries and regular blackberries that held their shape more. The flavor was absolutely incredible with the boysenberries. If you can get your hands on some fresh boysenberries, you for sure need to try them in this recipe.

Check out my blog post on the Differences Between Blackberries, Marionberries, and Boysenberries.

How Many Cakes Does This Recipe Make?

How many it makes depends on the size of your cooking vessel. I made two cakes using two 4-inch small cake pans.

You probably could make a single one in an 8-inch cake pan but that probably wouldn't fit in nearly all our air fryers, unless you had a super big one. You can simply bake it in the oven if you wanted. I have done that before using ramekins such as in this Peach Individual Upside Down Cake recipe.

Why Use an Air Fryer?

The reason I used my air fryer is because we are in a camper and my oven doesn't even work at all anymore. But even if I wasn't, making them in an air fryer is a great option because you don't have to eat up your oven in the hot summer to make these small cakes.

The air fryer I have is Ninja dual basket model. It has a bake setting which really just lowers the temperature you start with, it doesn't change anything else really. For example, if I hit air fry the default temperature is 390 degrees. If I hit bake, the default temperature is 325. Most baked goods are baked at 350, but in the air fryer you want a lower temperature in order so that you don't have a burned top and raw middle.

In this case though I am actually cooking my cakes at 300 degrees. I found that they did the best at that temperature. It was enough to get them brown on top and cook the interior through. We don't want burned cake on the outside and raw cake in the middle!

Instructions

First we are going to prep our cake pans. I like to just rub some butter to grease the pans. This will to make sure your cakes don't stick at all. That is the biggest nightmare when making an upside down cake.

Then you are going to take your flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt mix them together in one bowl. Then you will combine the buttermilk (trust me the buttermilk makes it better!), sugar, and vanilla extract. The quality of vanilla extract matters, the better the extract the better the cake.

Then you will add the wet ingredients to the dry. Mix until they are just combined. Don't overwork it or you will regret it (that means it will be tough!).

Now before you add the batter, divide the berries, brown sugar, and butter evenly between both cake pans. Then you can pour your batter overtop again evenly distributing it between both pans.

Time to put it in your air fryer looking like this:

And when it's done it will look like this:

⏲️ Time & Temp - Air Fry at 300 degrees for 15-17 minutes or until the cakes reach an internal temperature over 200 degrees when tested with a thermometer.

This is the thermometer I use to check the temperature:

It's the The Thermapen® ONE from ThermoWorks. It reads it in a literal second. So worth having on hand. I use it near to daily.

How to Remove the Cakes

Now comes the most rewarding part, remove the cakes. Here is how you do it:

Wait for 5 mintues.

Run a butter knife around the edge of the cake.

Place a small plate over top of the cake pan. Quickly turn upside down.

Tap the bottom of the cake pan. It should slide it when you pull it up. I wear an oven mitten or have a towel on hand when I do this as the cake pan is still pretty warm at that point and my hands are sensitive to heat.

Allow another 20 or so minutes for the cake to cool. The berry layer on top will have jelled together and won't be runny at all.

Now the only question left is how long will it take you to get these cakes? My guess is not long!