Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

Melt 1/3 cup butter in 8- or 9-inch round cake pan. Sprinkle 1/2 cup brown sugar evenly over butter. (Reserve pineapple juice as you drain pineapple rings.) Arrange drained pineapple rings in an attractive pattern on the butter-sugar coating. Garnish with maraschino cherries and pecan halves.

Make the cake batter (see below) and pour it over the pineapple. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until a wooden toothpick thrust into center of cake comes out clean. Immediately turn upside-down on serving plate. Do not remove pan for a few minutes. Brown sugar mixture will run down over cake instead of clinging to pan. Serve cake warm with whipped cream.

Cake batter:

Beat 2 eggs until thick and lemon-colored (5 min)

Gradually beat in 2/3 cup sugar.

Beat in all at once:

6 Tbsp. reserved pineapple juice

1 tsp. vanilla

Sift together and beat in all at once:

1 cup sifted all-purpose flour or cake flour

1/3 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

This recipe is from the 1950 Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook, which my grandma gave me for a bridal shower. I have made this once, for a French-Canadian rich woman classmate of my husband's during graduate school, and she loved it! (She is a pineapple fan.) That's the kind of thing a new bride gets nervous about... I hope it turns out as well for you, Kristin, if you decide to try this recipe, and it kind of makes me want to try it again!

The recipe doesn't give the size of canned pineapple to buy, but make sure you get the rings, not tidbits or chunks (those would work, but this looks prettier). You could always use fresh pineapple, too, I suppose, though cutting into those things confuses me. That's another thing I should try sometime...

Photo credit: thecakelab.com

(Doesn't that cake look lovely up there? In my cookbook, it shows pecan halves placed kind of between the pineapple rings.)