U for upside-down pineapple cake

I made this several months ago but have gotten behind in blogging partly because I didn’t feel like writing but mostly because I lost the pictures. I was nearing the end of a memory card and had a big weekend planned (like I said months ago, as in pre co-vid yes it’s been that long.) I was scared the memory card would run out so I swapped out to a new card just for that weekend and put the old one back in when the weekend was over. I made this cake for the weekend but with the card swapping I forgot I had put the pictures on the new card. I tend to stay behind a bit in blogging so it was a month or so before I realized I had lost the pictures. I thought somehow I accidently deleted them. It would not be the first time I did something like that so I was trying to decide what to do, should I just post about the cake without pictures, or should I make another cake. At this point I had already made the next two recipes, so it would have been back tracking and I really wanted to do this book without back tracking, but somehow posting without at least one picture seems wrong. So I sat on it for a bit, trying to wrap my head around remaking the cake. But here’s the thing about cake, it needs to be shared and by this point Co-vid was (and still is) keeping me away from things. home and work has basically been my life for the last several months. I have not been sick and hope I don’t get sick, so right now there is no cake sharing. I finally begrudgingly decided to post without pictures. But I put it off, and put it off some more till one morning I woke up with a thought in my head. “I know where the pictures are! They’re on the other memory card!” And they were, so now with pictures and everything upside-down pineapple cake.

Pineapple upside-down cake was a favorite of mine when I was a child, we used this recipe and others and it didn’t matter the recipe it always turned out delicious but we always did it a bit different we always used crushed pineapple.

I always wanted to make it like the pictures with the pineapple rings and cherries but my mom never wanted to make it that way so we didn’t. I remember asking her about the cherries and she told me she didn’t care for them on the cake so I was a poor deprived child without maraschino cherries. Funny thing is I never really liked the taste of them in the first place, but I always liked the look. It’s such a bright cheerful thing a maraschino cherry. So taste good or not I wanted it. And I never got it.

As for using crushed pineapple as opposed to rings you get a more even flavor and more caramelization because the pineapple goes from edge to edge it’s also easier to cut and the rings don’t slide off when you cut into them. I don’t know if it’s because of growing up eating it with crushed pineapple but I actually like it better than the rings.

I wasn’t sure which way I liked better until I made this as it had been years since I even had pineapple upside-down cake.

I made this the traditional way with the rings and the cherries like one always sees in pictures. Yay I finally got my cherries!
And here is what I think on the cherries. Yum. Seriously I liked them on the cake, baking them completely changes them it makes them more like cherries, and less like… I don’t know; spongy globs of sweetness. The texture of Maraschino cherries is just weird.

This cake is done like most upside-down cakes, with brown sugar and butter being melted on the bottom then fruit placed on the sugar and cake batter poured on top before baking in the oven. Once done the cake is turned out and left to sit for a bit before removing the pan so the caramelized cake is then on top.

I thought this cake turned out really well, but in the future I am on board for the crushed pineapple, with the cherries of course, since I have some left and cannot think of anything else to do with them. I do not like them raw so it’s not as if they are not going on ice cream sundaes or anything.

Another thing I would do slightly different is cook it just a tad bit longer. It was good but I think just two minutes more would have made all the difference.