Pineapple Upside Down Cake

This week, since it has been so hot and steamy outside, I decided to make a tropical American Classic, a Pineapple Upside Down Cake.

This cake is truly one of my favorites. It dates back to the mid 1920s when Dole developed a way to cut their pineapples into rings and can them for delivery worldwide. 

On a side note: Do you know how pineapples are grown?  I always assumed they came from some sort of fruit tree, like coconuts or bananas, but I was wrong.  I took a trip to Hawaii in 2007 and went to the Dole plantation in Oahu.  I was surprised to find that they are actually grown from the crown of an old pineapple.  You can just stick the cut crown from your store bought pineapple in the ground and if you have the right climate and about 24 months to wait around you will have a cute little baby pineapple growing right out of the top! 

Anyway . . . 

Pineapple Upside Down Cake:

The first step is to make the devilishly delicious sugar syrup topping.

Take ½ cup butter and melt in heavy saucepan.  Add ¾ cup packed dark brown sugar and cook, stirring frequently, until sugar is dissolved.  Leave to cook on medium/low heat until it bubbles as shown below. 

To be honest i burnt the first batch because i was looking for my camera.  So be careful!  Also don't pour burnt sugar in the garbage it apparently will melt right through the bag and make nasty garbage toffee on the bottom of the can.  Sorry Robby!

Pour into 10” cake pan and arrange 6-8 pineapple rings to lay flat on bottom of pan. 

Even though the recipe stems from the invention of canned rings I still prefer to use fresh pineapple for the top of this cake.  I took the easy way out this time because the store had fresh precut rings for the same price as a whole pineapple.  Seems silly right?

The next step is to make the cake batter.

You’ll need:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/4 cup cake flour

1/4 cup of ground almonds (from about 2 oz of whole almonds)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups of sugar

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature

4 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup sour cream

Mix up the dry ingredients in a bowl (including almonds).

To grind the almonds I use my super cute mini food processor.  (It is really just a chopper fashioned to look like a mini processor but for $20 at Costco it was a great buy.)

In a separate bowl cream the butter and sugar.  Add eggs one at a time beating to combine after each addition.  Add vanilla then dry ingredients alternately with sour cream in 2 parts.

Pour over syrup and rings in pan.

Bake in preheated oven at 325^◦ for 1 hour or until knife comes out clean.  Don’t over bake it will dry out. (Think of it this way cake batter tastes better than a dry cake any day!)

Cool until pan it able to be held and flip onto plate.  Make sure the plate is big enough for the cake but small enough to fit in the fridge or under a cake dome!.

If you want to be a retro fancy pants stud pineapple ring holes with maraschino cherries.

If you are not prepared to eat a whole piece don’t even bother tasting it.  It is irresistible!

Other fun pineapple facts:

Pineapple is said to have been “discovered” by Christopher Columbus.

The word pineapple in English was first recorded in 1398, when it was originally used to describe pine cones.  Later used for the fruit by European settlers in 1664 because of their pine cone-ish looks.

The most common pollinator of the pineapple is the hummingbird.

Since pollinated pineapple plants are not tasty it is illegal to bring hummingbirds to Hawaii.

A pineapple was traditionally given as a gift of friendship.

One pineapple plant produces one pineapple each year.

A pineapple is considered to be a cluster of 100-300 little fruitlets.

This cake makes me pineapple crazy!