Pineapple upside-down cake

Buttery light cake baked over caramel and pineapples (fresh or canned!)

Pineapple upside-down cake made with canned pineapple and maraschino cherries. I used 6 rounds on this one, and cut the extras in half to go around the sides, but 7 on the one below with none on the sides. As you like!

Hello!

Thank you to everyone on Instagram for their suggestions this week—so many great ideas to start working on! I love pineapple—even canned—so this upside-down cake was a fun recipe to work and snack on, and it was already on my list to try.

I started with Deb Perelman’s (Smitten Kitchen) method of quickly cooking the butter and sugar for the caramel topping, and added some juice from the canned pineapple and a little salt—always a must to keep caramel from being cloying. The added juice gives the caramel a hint of tropical flavor, but if you are using fresh pineapple and you don’t have enough juice, you can omit it (directions for both in recipe).

As for the maraschino cherries, omit if you don’t like them, but I found more than one brand at my local grocery that makes them naturally, and they were too tempting not to try—they look like garnets once baked with the caramel.

The neon-colored, commercial maraschino cherries that most of us grew up with in Shirley Temples—and picked out of my grandmother’s whiskey sours—are bleached, treated with a chemical to make them firm, and dyed; I have a fondness for them based solely on the associated affection for my grandmother. Here’s a tutorial to make your own from frozen cherries if you are so inclined.

The cake layer was the component I experimented with the most. I wanted a light, tender cake that would soak up the fruit juices and caramel and have a good buttery flavor without having a ‘tight’ crumb like a poundcake—and one without almond flour since I already have a peach upside-down cake with nut flour. I added a little bit of oil which gives cake a more ‘moist’ texture when cool. This new cake ticks all of those boxes and would make a wonderful plain yellow cake for layering (minus the fruit juice).

Preparing pineapple rings and cutting fresh pineapple for two versions of upside-down cake

Note on tools: I’ve been providing links to useful tools, but I’m looking for alternatives to Amazon. I’ll update when I have some sources to recommend that I prefer!

Note: If you are using fresh pineapple and don’t have enough juice for the caramel and cake, just sub milk (or milk alternative) for the juice. A quart or two pints of freshly cut pineapple from the store would make a good alternative if you can’t find whole ripe pineapples, and they often have juice.