Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

One of my favorite cool weather cakes to bake is pineapple upside-down cake.  It's fantastic warm and melts in your mouth.

I had this great recipe that I used for years however was unable to find it this round, and though I could have done it by memory I decided to look at one of my favorite recipe websites, allrecipes.com, and found this recipe that had over 400 reviews of positive feedback and almost 10,000 people have saved it to their recipe boxes, Anne's Pineapple Upside-Down Cake VII.  It uses a lot more brown sugar than I'm accustomed to using and called for a cast iron skillet which I do not have, however I thought I'd tackle it anyways, and of course give it my own little tweaks that I've incorporated over the years of baking them.


Pineapple Upside-Down Cake VII

Prep Time: 20 Minutes Cook Time: 45 Minutes

Ready In: 1 Hour 5 Minutes Servings: 12

"This pineapple upside down cake is made in an iron skillet. It's quick, easy and so beautiful."

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter 1 1/2 cups brown sugar 1 (20 ounce) can sliced pineapple

10 maraschino cherries 1 (18.25 ounce) package white cake mix

Directions:

1.

Melt the butter over medium high heat in the iron skillet. Remove from the heat and sprinkle the brown sugar evenly to cover the butter. Next, arrange pineapple rings around the bottom of the pan, one layer deep. Place a maraschino cherry into the center of each pineapple ring. Prepare the cake mix as directed by the manufacturer, substitute some of the pineapple juice for some of the liquid in the directions. Pour the batter over the pineapple layer.

2.

Bake as directed by the cake mix directions. Cool for 10 minutes, then carefully turn out onto a plate. Do not let the cake cool too much or it will be stuck to the pan.

My tweaks:

• As mentioned before I do not have a cast iron skillet so I just used a 9x13 glass cake pan.
• I used yellow cake not white cake.
• I soak the pineapple slices in about 1/3 of a cup of spiced rum in a zipper bag or a plastic bowl with a lid, shake them or turn them every so often to get even soaking, the longer the better, try at least an hour to overnight.  Still save your juice from the can!
• Replace some of the liquid called for in the cake mix recipe with the rum from the pineapple soak and then the rest with the leftover canned pineapple juice and finally water if you need more liquid.
• I place cherries in the voids around the edges of the pineapple rings and around the edges of the pans this way you get your full cherry satisfaction.

Flipping tip: If you've never made an upside-down cake of any sort the easiest way to make your flip without resulting in a pile of mess... place the dish you are turning your cake onto on top of the pan you baked in, and then flip placing your dish on to the counter, I like to give the pan a few pounds of the palm on the bottom in case there are any lingering pineapples or cherries, however if you do not let it cool too long it should not be an issue, then remove your pan and find a perfectly flipped beautiful cake.

I did somehow manage to think to take a quick shot of the cold
yummy leftovers before they were dished out.

This cake turned out absolutely delicious!  It looked so good and I didn't even think before we cut into it to take a picture of it fresh and hot for the blog I was sure I'd be writing.  But who can blame me, our mouths were watering and we were intoxicated by the smell. 

It melted in our mouths and the large amount of sugar formed the perfect crispy crusty wonderfulness around the edges of the pineapples.  I will definitely be purchasing a cast iron skillet to try to make this in as well.  One of my coworkers told me that is how her grandmother had done it and there is no other way to eat them.  I found that Amazon has a 12-Inch Pre-Seasoned Skillet that looks perfect at a great price and eligible for free shipping.  I cannot wait to try this again in that skillet!

If you've never tried to make a homemade pineapple upside down cake it's truly an easy cake to make and is so yummy it will have your friends and family in awe of your Domestic Goddess skills.  Give it a try and you will not be sorry.

Much Love!!

The Next Day

So yesterday was my birthday as I mentioned in my post Birthday Blessings 2011.  First business of the day, I tried to drive to Walmart to get a futon however realized that there was no way to fit it in my little car.  I then tried to drive home before my friend was supposed to be there, I find that half of Gainesville, ok I exaggerate, just a huge part of University Avenue had been blocked off for the Gator Homecoming parade.  I was thinking 'NOOOOOOO', I then proceeded having to drive down side roads for detours through residential neighborhoods.  This was a maddening thing, well could have been, but I kept hope that I'd eventually make it through this traffic jungle of people trying to find parking places, and people charging $5-15 a car to park on the grass of their yards, and my urge to just start bypassing the traffic and driving through yards and barreling through fences with my little car.  Luckily I had awesome music to keep me sane.  I finally found my way through to a major road, after an hour.  It took me longer on the detour to find a major road to get me home than it took me to drive to Walmart and go in and find the futons and talk to sales person and decide that it wouldn't fit in the car.  Oh and to stop and look at awesome televisions that I cannot afford.  Fortunately this detour was the only odd moment of the day.

My friend arrived and we had a great time.  He happens to drive a giant beautiful pickup and took me to get the futon - yay!  Definitely one of those times to take a moment and thank God for Southern men and their pickup trucks.  We hung out watched movies, ordered food in, took shots of the super delicious Pucker Vodka citrus... it was all great!!  I spent the day doing basically nothing and I loved it!  In the past when I've had a birthday party I always ended up having to do way more work than any birthday girl should have to.  So it was awesome that I could actually sit back and relax and just enjoy having company for the day and no drama either.  The older I get the more I just try to find that elusive zen state, and yesterday was pretty close.

Balue has decided the futon was purchased for him.

I woke up too early though, and went to bed late, and woke up again today too early.  So what did I do the day after my birthday?  Well I napped... fantastic!!

Much love!!