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A delicious old-fashioned cake perfect for a picnic! I brought this to a Sail Past feast a few years ago, and it was a hit. It’s from Susan Branch’s Sweets to the Sweet: A Keepsake Book from the Heart of the Home, so follow her advice and serve it with a silky smooth sauce. Often pineapple upside-down cakes have maraschino cherries nestled in the pineapple rings. The vibrant red cherries make the cake beautiful, but I detest maraschino cherries! Here, I’ve replaced them with buttery, nutty walnuts. Not as colourful to behold, but much tastier!
I can quickly put this cake together without any major trips to the grocery store. If I want to make a German Torte, I always need to get heavy cream, which I don’t have on hand. Or if I want to make a cheesecake, I always need to get cream cheese, which I also don’t have on hand. But the ingredients of this cake are staples in my pantry – just flour, butter, sugar, eggs. The canned pineapple is easy to keep in the pantry and whip out whenever you need to make a cake on short notice.
This cake doesn’t have any butter in the batter (just in the pineapple brown sugar glaze), since it is based on a sponge cake recipe. Sponges are normally leavened by beating the eggs with sugar to make a thick foam. This foam expands in the oven and causes the cake to rise. Sponges are different than butter cakes, where butter (or margarine) is beaten with sugar, then eggs and flour. Both are delicious, however!
- 3 Tbsp butter (or margarine)
- ¾ cup brown sugar
- 16 oz can pineapple rings in juice
- ¼ - ½ cup walnut halves
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup sugar
- ½ cup juice, drained from pineapple
- 1½ tsp vanilla
- 1½ cups flour
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- 1" piece vanilla bean
- 2 cups heavy cream
- ¼ cup sugar
- Preheat oven to 350F.
- Melt 3 Tbsp butter in a 9" springform pan. Sprinkle brown sugar evenly over melted butter.
- Arrange pineapple slices (saving the juice) over the sugar. Put walnuts in pineapple centres and around edges. Set aside.
- In a medium bowl, beat eggs until fluffy. Gradually add sugar and beat until thick.
- Add the pineapple juice and vanilla. Mix well.
- Add the flour, salt and baking powder. Beat until smooth.
- Scrape cake batter into prepared cake pan. I like to surround the bottom of the cake pan with some aluminium foil, which prevents any of the melted butter from dripping out and burning if your springform pan has any minute gaps.
- Bake 50 minutes, then let cool.
- Turn out cake, upside down, onto a cake platter. Serve with vanilla sauce, o whipped cream
- Slit vanilla bean in half and scrap pulp into a small saucepan.
- Stir in cream and bring to a boil.
- Add sugar, stir, and let sauce cool. Chill well.
- To serve, pour a small puddle onto a plate and put a slice of cake right in the middle. Enjoy!
Yummmm! I love pinapple upside down cake, but I haven’t made it in years!
Go for it! It comes together really easily, and is super yummy!
This looks amaazing! I’m definitely going to have to give it a try!
Meinhilde is being modest when she says it was a hit at our Sail Past feast. Guests talked about it for days ! Missed you at Sail Past this year M but glad that Tomiko, DG and King K came out
!
Hi, there is no mention of quantity of flour…can you advise?
Sorry about that, and thanks for pointing it out! There should be 1 1/2 cups of flour.