Friday, April 20, 2007

Pineapple Upside-Down Cake




Pineapple upside-down cake is as foreign to me as eating chocolate covered ants. I know I’ve never baked one, and as far as I can recall, I’ve never eaten one either. Still, the cake is such a piece of Americana that I already knew it needed maraschino cherries inside the pineapple rings even though the recipe didn’t call for them. These things seep into our consciousness whether we like it or not.

My husband adores this stuff. He attributes it to a combination of Southern heritage on his father’s side and having eaten too many meals in cafeterias as a kid. Frankly, I’m surprised my mother-in-law would permit the cafeteria grazing as she’s a very skilled and schooled cook. In my mind upside-down cakes and crunch cakes are the parallel cousins of the cake world, neither of which I have any experience with other than having seen them in books.

This recipe called for using a cast iron pan, which worked fine, though I wish it had been just slightly smaller so the cake would have been higher-again, I don’t know how flat Upside down cake ought to be, so the visual details may be just fine depending upon your familiarity with the cake.

I found the recipe HERE though I did use tinned pineapple rings, omitted the rum and added the cherries. Otherwise, I pretty much stuck to the recipe. They categorise it as “medium” difficulty which I should think is an exaggeration. It was very, very simple to put together and un-mould. If you can stir, you can make this cake.

I am now stuck with most of a large can of pineapple juice open without a planned use (a good stock item to keep on hand) so I think it might make sense to mix it with some crushed pineapple and ginger syrup for ices. Anyone have other ideas?

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