Pineapple Upside Down Cake

One of the great things about Pineapple Upside Down Cake is the pineapple slices and the layer of caramel on top. We’ve used light brown sugar for the caramel, but feel free to use regular white sugar if you don’t have brown. Brown sugar does give it a really deep caramel flavour though.

Ingredients:

• 3 tbsp. melted butter (for the caramel)
• 6 tbsp. light brown sugar (for the caramel)
• 7 canned pineapple slices
• 1 cup flour
• 2 ½ tsp. baking powder
• ¼ tsp. salt
• 2 eggs
• ½ cup sugar
• ½ cup melted butter (at room temperature)
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1 ½ tsp. vanilla essence
• 3 tbsp. liquid from the pineapple can

Instructions:

1. Rub the butter on the bottom and sides of a 7 inch round cake pan.
2. Sprinkle the brown sugar so that it forms an even layer on the bottom.
3. Arrange the pineapple slices on top of the sugar layer. Set the tray aside.
4. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl and set it aside.
5. Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius.
6. Beat together the eggs, sugar and melted butter until you get a creamy texture. For this you can use a stand mixer, hand held electric mixer, or even your juice blender. If you are using your juice blender, running it for around 2 minutes on low would do. You can also beat it by hand using a fork. If using a fork you’ll have to go at it for around 10 minutes.
7. If you used the blender, transfer the egg mixture to a bowl. If not, you can just go on to the step below.
8. Add around 4 tablespoons of the flour mixture to the egg mixture and mix until the flour is fully incorporated. You can just use a spoon for the mixing.
9. Then add in around 2 tablespoons of milk and mix until combined.
10. Repeat steps 8 & 9 until you run out of flour and milk.
11. Mix in the vanilla essence and 3 tbsp. of liquid from the pineapple can.
12. Gently pour the mixture into the cake pan that has the pineapple, sugar and butter.
13. Place the tin on the middle rack of the preheated oven and bake until the top is golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. For us this took 35 minutes. But oven temperatures differ, so keep an eye on it, especially towards the end and make the necessary adjustments.
14. When the cake is baked, remove it from the oven and let it cool down in the pan for around 10 minutes. If you let the cake cool down too much it might not be that easy to get it off the pan.
15. Place a plate over the cake pan. Grasp both the pan and the plate together on opposite sides; the pan is still going to be hot, so use a kitchen towel or oven mitts to do this. Then flip it over so that now the cake sits on the plate upside down. Gently lift the cake pan.