Pineapple Upside Down Cake Recipe

5, 0 and 3. These three numbers totally changed what I know about Pineapple Upside Down Cakes.  

I was blog hopping awhile back when I came across this podcast made by Lori Baltazar of Dessert Comes First. In the video she's with Sonja Ocampo who was celebrating the seventh anniversary of her cupcake shop when halfway through their conversation, at 5:03 exactly, Lori dropped the bomb on me (I didn't say us, just me,  because you may probably know this) - Pineapple Upside Down Cake is a retro dessert. Oh my, can we just do a quick rewind here? 

[Insert rewind sound effects here] 

Yep, she said it.  Pineapple Upside Down Cake is retro. And then I realized, it is. It's something we won't normally see now in baking books or in dessert shelves. Which is kind of a sad thing. I wonder why? This cake deserves to be a classic, along with Chocolate Cake, Red Velvet and Chocolate Chip Cookies.  

So as a little push to the right direction, we're making a Pineapple Upside Down Cake today. Yes, I loved it so much I not only baked it, I even painted it in watercolor. And I really need to practice my watercolor painting skills. Oh well, here's the recipe :)

 

Pineapple Upside Down Cake Recipe

350F/40 minutes

What we need:

1 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 can sliced pineapple

maraschino cherries (not stemmed)

5 egg whites

5 egg yolks

1 1/2 cups white sugar

7 tbsp pineapple juice

2 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Here's how:

(1) Melt butter in a small saucepan. Let it cool. Once cooled down, pour into a 12-inch round baking pan. Sprinkle brown sugar evenly over the butter.

(2) Arrange the pineapple slices and the cherries on top of the brown sugar/butter. Be as creative as you can be. Me? I'm sticking to how my Ma taught me :) Classic. 

(3) In a medium sized bowl, sift / dry whisk together all dry ingredients - flour and baking powder. 

(4) In separate bowl, beat egg whites until soft peaks form. Set aside. 

(5) In another bowl, beat egg yolks and sugar until creamy. 

(6) Add pineapple juice and the vanilla extract.

(7) Then add the dry ingredients. 

(8) Fold in the egg whites into the into the egg yolk mixture until you have something like this. 

(9) Pour batter into the pan and bake at 350F for 40 minutes or until done. 

Thank you, Auntie Fely for this wonderful recipe.