Best of the Baking, 2009

It started with a conversation about a cake “like my mother made,” and when you have a friend whose mother last made this cake before 1970, you’re actually interested in seeing if you can recreate it. Pineapple upside-down cake with red maraschino cherries? Sure, it’s the perfect 1950’s dessert — lots of butter, sugar and rum. Sounds like a perfect choice for the first cake of the new year.

(This cake isn’t remotely vegan, and our friend isn’t either. But we love him anyway.)

A lot of 50’s recipes for Pineapple Upside Down Cake call for boxed cake mix. We thought this wasn’t really necessary, as the cake is a really simple sponge — and if you can make a sponge cake, you’re ready to make any number of UK desserts by just adding a custard sauce. Women of the 50’s had just been introduced to the magic of mixes, but since they’re old news now, you can do this the “long” way — which is not so very long at all.

As with any recipe, before you begin, you should read all of the fiddly little instructions. Pretend this is 1950, and your standing among the neighborhood wives depends on making this just right. (Also pretend WE didn’t make the mistake of forgetting a whole bunch of steps, and are just remind you because we’re such great bakers. Yeah, right, huh?)

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

• 2/3 cup butter
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup dark rum
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 can pineapple slices
• maraschino cherries (enough to fill centers of pineapple slices)

1. Preheat your oven to 350° degrees.
2. Next, place the butter, cinnamon, brown sugar and rum (Frankly, we don’t know if the kind of rum you use matters, as we don’t know from alcohol, but we used a brown Bacardi rum) in a medium-sized cast iron skillet over medium flame.
3. Heat your rum, sugar, and butter until a slow boil is achieved. A cast iron skillet is THE best thing to use in this recipe, as it’s heavy, oven-proof, and is unlikely to scorch your cake.
4. Carefully place pineapples in the rum, butter and sugar mixture. Even more carefully, place one cherry in the center of each pineapple ring. You might also cut slices of the slices of pineapple into halves and line the sides of the frying pan with them (standing up on edge).

While your sauce is just melting and cooking off all of that rum, assemble the rest of your cake:

• 1 cup AP flour, sifted (we didn’t, but should have)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 2/3 cup sugar

1/4 cup milk

• 2 tablespoons rum, optional

1. Sift dry ingredients into a large bowl, then add wet. Beat with a wire whisk for one minute to incorporate air.
2. Immediately pour batter over pineapples and cherries in their lava-hot sauce — be careful! Next, slide entire skillet into oven. Bake at 350°F for 35 minutes or until a toothpick comes away clean.
3. When cake is baked, allow it to sit and cool for two minutes (or, you know, one minute – if you wait too long it’ll stick to the skillet).
4. Brush on the optional rum.
5. CAREFULLY set a large plate over the skillet, and with carefully swaddled hands, flip the cake onto the platter. (This might be a two-person operation.) Don’t wait on this step, or the cake and pineapple will stick. The buttery rum sauce will still be somewhat liquefied at this step, and will run down the cake, leaving it candied and coated with sticky loveliness.

Now, call in the bridge club — it’s time to eat.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.