The past few days I have been consumed by Pineapple Upside Down Cake. A coworker hired me to bake one for her husband's birthday, and I accepted the challenge, even though I had never attempted one before. It always sounded so complicated. But it's really not. Maybe a 6.5 on the 1-10 baking scale of difficulty, and if you buy almond flour that brings it down to about 4.
Anyway, since she asked me on Saturday, I decided to make a practice cake on Sunday using a simple recipe I found online. It turned out okay, and it was a hit at the dessert party I took it to (especially with the guys! note that men seem to LOVE this type of cake) but I was not a hundred percent sold on it. It seemed kind of flat. So the next night I tried a different recipe, with more unusual ingredients, which I spent half the night running around in a rainstorm to find. You won't have a problem in Chapel Hill, but in New York, you'd be surprised at how barbaric the grocery stores are. They never have anything I need. That second cake seemed to turn out really well, and that is the cake I gave my coworker for her husband.
So, tonight I decided that after all my trouble, I should make a Pineapple Upside Down Cake for me! And I did. Here is the recipe I used, and my notes:
Ingredients:
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1 can (20 ounce) pineapple slices (rings)
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
6 Tbsp cake flour
6 Tbsp ground almonds
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 3/4 cups white sugar
1 cup butter or margarine
4 eggs
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup sour cream
1. Gather all your ingredients together, along with 2 mixing bowls and a big cast-iron skillet. If you don't have a skillet, you can use a 10-inch cake pan with 2-inch sides.
2. In the skillet, melt 1/2 cup butter and add the brown sugar, stirring until the sugar is liquid and bubbling. Remove from the heat and add the pineapple slices, with one in the center and the rest all around. Set aside.
3. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
4. Whisk the flours, almonds, baking powder, and salt together in one mixing bowl and set aside. (Note, you can either chop up almonds for about 45 minutes by hand or use some kind of modern kitchen appliance to grind them into powder, or you can use almond flour from Whole Foods. It's either your time or your money! I chopped, then ground with a rolling pin, then sifted until I had fine almond powder and nice arm muscles.)
5. In a separate bowl, mix the 1 cup butter and the white sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one by one, beating after each one. Add the vanilla, too.
6. Alternately add the flour mixture and the sour cream, continuing to mix well after each, and scraping the sides of the bowl to mix thoroughly.
7. Pour the batter into the cast iron skillet, over the pineapple and brown sugar base, completely covering it.
8. Bake for about an hour, or until toothpick comes out clean. (Mmmm... lick the bowl!) When the cake is done, cool it in the pan for 10 or 15 minutes and then turn it over onto a pretty platter, revealing the sugary pineapple top.
9. Enjoy warm, with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream, or just a tall glass of cold milk.
10. There should be ten steps to this recipe, so I will say lastly: share a slice with your neighbor. When my cake was done baking tonight, and my sister and I were enjoying it, I noticed that my adorable neighbor-guy (our windows face each other across an alley, so yes--we are always spying on each other!) was home alone watching TV. So I took him a piece of cake. He was completely surprised and genuinely happy to receive it, and promised to cook something for me next week. See! What did I tell you? I think there is something about this cake and men... In fact, my hunt for a cast-iron skillet resulted in me making at least 3 new male friends. It might sound silly, but I think this cake is charmed with romantic powers. And even if it weren't, it's amazingly delicious!
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