Come for recipe and stay for the story!
2-20oz cans of pineapple rings (save juice for cake)
1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
1 stick of butter, melted
Cake:
8 oz unsalted butter, softened (2 sticks)
1 lb sugar (2 1/4 cups)
4 eggs, room temperature
1 tsp. vanilla extract
12 oz All purpose flour (3 cups)
1 Tbls. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cu pineapple juice, lukewarm (from cans)
1/2 cu whole milk, lukewarm
Dollop of sour cream, greek yogurt, or mayonnaise
To prepare pan: (I used a 9x13" pan) Spray pan with pan spray. Mix melted butter and brown sugar together and spread evenly on bottom of the pan. It doesn't seem like enough, but trust me, it is! Arrange pineapple rings on top of brown sugar mixture and set aside. Preheat oven to 350F.
Cake:
1. Mix together really soft butter with sugar in a mixing bowl until light, white, and fluffy. Scrape down sides of the bowl to make sure the bottom is fully mixed.
2. Add room temperature eggs one at a time, mixing in between each addition until it is fully incorporated. Scrape down sides of bowl again to ensure proper mixing.
4. Add vanilla
5. Separately mix together all of the dry ingredients and then add about a third of dries to the butter/sugar mixture and mix until incorporated.
6. Add half of the liquid and mix until incorporated.
7. Add half of the leftover dries and mix until incorporated.
8. Scrape down sides of bowl and then add the last of the liquid and mix
9. Add last of dries and mix until batter is nice and smooth.
10. Pour cake batter into pan and smooth with spatula so it's nice and even.
Bake 350F for about 40-45 minutes. Until a toothpick comes out with crumbs on it. If the top is getting too dark you can turn your oven down to 325 and bake until finished.
One of my earliest baking memories besides, Christmas cookie time, was pineapple upside down cake. I remember making it with my mom a few times a year and I loved everything about it, except the pineapple! I was a picky kid, my three main food groups were Kraft mac and cheese (like their motto used to say, "It's the cheesiest"), chicken nuggets, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. My only other obsession was apple sauce. I could each a whole can of it in one sitting (back when it came in a can and it had to be White House brand!).
There would always be discussion about the pineapple, my mom liked to put the pineapple juice in the cake to give it extra flavor, but convinced I didn't like pineapple (despite loving the tangy-ness that I found from it in the brown sugar) the thought of the juice in the cake disgusted me.
As an adult, I have somewhat grown out of my pickiness (My husband would probably beg to differ), and this cake is now a favorite of mine too! This recipe uses my trusty vanilla cake that I use and modify for almost anything that is not a chocolate cake. It is very important that the ingredients are room temperature when making it or the butter does weird things when you bake it (I know this from too much experience to admit to). This is a cake that I could probably now make in my sleep (I have the recipe memorized), but I still screw it up because I tend to be too impatient for my own good. (Don't be like me, strive for greatness! LOL)
Another of my favorite things as a kid being raised in Virginia was history. It was literally all around me-the first English settlement (Jamestown), the end of the Revolutionary War (Yorktown), and too many Civil War sites to name. My first class at L'Academie drew me in to a new side of baking I had never thought about. The history of recipes. I learned that the Toll House Chocolate Chip cookie recipe came about because of laziness. A lady was making chocolate cookies and was too lazy to melt her chocolate so she chopped it up hoping it would melt inside on its own, and it did! Just not how she was anticipating, but a new cookie was born that day, probably one of America's favorites!
I wanted to learn more about the pineapple upside cake so you are a more informed baker, because what other way to further impress people with homemade cake, but to share all the facts about that homemade cake?
The pineapple upside cake is a variation of cakes once known as "spider cakes" in the late 1800s because they were baked over a fire in a "spider" (a cast iron skillet with legs). There was typically a layer of fruit and sugar at the bottom topped with cake batter to help ease it out of the pan once finished baking. Fruits commonly used were things that were handy-berries, apples, pears-all things you could use with this same recipe if desired.
Then in 1901, James Dole, "The King of Pineapple," began the Hawaiian Pineapple company which has become the Dole fruit company we know today. In 1911, James Dole had an engineer, Henry Ginaca create a machine that made it easier to process pineapples. As time goes on necessity again becomes the mother of invention as Dole comes up with a contest in order to get more American's buying his pineapples, a recipe contest. There were 60,000 recipe entries and of those, 2500 were pineapple upside down cakes. Due to the popularity of the idea Dole ran an ad for the recipe, and the rest is history!
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