Friday, January 29, 2010

Pineapple Up-side down cake

Well.... Since I bake heaps and have a bit of time on my hand, I'm joining the heavenly cake place blog and be a heavenly cake baker! Woooohoooo! Anyways, this week's cake is the pineapple up-side down cake and boy I can tell you, it was absolutely delicious :)

Scale of difficulty ★★☆ (2.5 stars, the caramel was a tad tricky but the batter was quite easy)

Yummy-ness ★★★★☆ (First day) ☆ (Second day)

This cake is composed of two parts, caramel with pineapples and cherries on top of a butter cake base.

The actual recipe called for a fresh pineapple but I really can't be stuffed decoring pineapples, so I cheated a little and used unsweetened pineapples in a can :P I started off with draining my canned pineapples and cherries :)



Then it was time to make caramel! This was my second time making caramel... ever. The first time didn't go too well because I used margarine rather than real butter and sadly it separated. It still tasted good but looked a bit like er..... vomit. Anyways, I learnt my lesson and went and bought real butter. I have no idea what turbinado sugar is so I used half brown sugar (cause I love the sugar cane flavour of brown sugar) and half caster sugar.



It didn't take long for the sugar and butter mixture to caramelize, and it was absolutely beautiful! It hardened in no time though so it was a bit hard to spread the caramel out evenly...





With the pineapples and cherries on top of the caramel :) Looking gorgeous!




Yea as you can see I used normal cake pans rather than cupcake pans because a pineapple ring is bigger than a cupcake mould! I made two cause one is for today and one is for tomorrow, for my aunt's birthday dinner (in case you're wondering, I multiplied the recipe by 1.5).



mmmmm..... the batter smelled so nice! Very yoghurty :) A bit surprised at how little it makes tho... I was hoping that it will rise a lot but it didn't happen, so I ended up with two tiny cakes.

My helper for the day, Mr. JJ was quite impressed with how insanely detailed Rose's cookbook is.


THIS is the definition of golden brown! Purty :)



Finished products = YUM

How did it taste?
It was great! The cake was moist and light (how is that even possible??) and I loooove how buttery it was (probably because I haven't used real butter in ages). The caramel flavour was not as strong as I have hoped but it was still evident, I ♥ caramel :)

My dad reckoned it was a bit too moist for him, but mum thought it was absolutely delicious. My sister loved it so much that she even asked for seconds! and that's coming from a girl who normally doesn't like pineapples, she even offered to eat the round one as well lol. I liked it and I think JJ did as well. The 5 of us demolished the rectangular one in no time :)

Edited to add--
On the second day the caramel has mysteriously melted overnight and now the cake looks gross :( I might just have to eat it myself rather than give it to my aunt :(

Second edit--
We just ate the round one and ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.............. the caramel has melted and the cake is all gooey :( disgusting!!!! I know it is summer here but is caramel meant to melt like that?? I'm extremely disappointed that this great cake turned into mushy goo on the second day :(

7 comments:

Vicki said...

Did you refrigerate it and it still melted down?

I like the looks of it as a larger cake. Shows off the pineapple rings.

Elaine said...

No I didn't put it in the fridge... But still... I was shocked to see how the caramel has melted :(

Jenn said...

Sorry to hear the cake isn't good the next day. Btw, we have the same blog background, :).
http://knittybaker.blogspot.com/

Patricia @ ButterYum said...

Welcome to the group! Your cakes look lovely. Thanks for reporting how the caramel melted on day 2. I'll make a note of it.

Happy Baking!!

:)
ButterYum

NancyB said...

I'd guess that humidity might have helped the caramel to melt, too--certainly when it's summer here in Georgia, I get problems with all the extra moisture in the air.

Your cakes did look beautiful on day 1, anyway!

Virginia Taylors said...

I love your star method!! You are my kind of baker. Can't wait to see more.

HanaĆ¢ said...

Welcome to the club, Elaine! It's a nice little bunch of passionate bakers, so I think you'll enjoy it :o)

I love how your cakes turned out. I especially like the look in the loaf pan. Sorry to hear that the caramel melted on day #2.