How To Make Next-Level Pineapple Upside Down Cake

After a long long last I'm going to make for you one of the most requested cake recipes since day one on Bigger Bolder Baking. You've been asking for this and finally eight years later I'm going to make it we are making pineapple upside down cake. It is very retro. It is very cool and it has had a total resurgence. And it is really popular right now. It's really easy. It's delicious. Let's get started. Okay, so our first step is over at the stovetop. So I have a heavy bottom saucepan here. And into this I'm going to add in some butter and some brown sugar. And then on a medium heat, we're just going to let this melt together and then come to a simmer. This is going to create the base for our pineapple upside down cake. This is what makes it so delicious. Gemma, did you make this a lot growing up? You know, I think when I grew up, we did have pineapple upside down cake a lot. When I think of it, I think of my sister Julie, for some reason, I always associate her with pineapple upside down cake because I know that she was a big fan. And it was just something that like, yeah, it's really easy to make. I feel like it's iconic in a lot of households that like, you know, a lot of people grew up with like homemade pineapple upside down cake. There's something about that familiarity that is kind of comforting and nostalgic. Okay, so this has been simmering for around a minute. Now this is absolutely perfect. We just want to get it a little bit caramelized. Then we're going to turn off the heat, move it over here and then very carefully pour it into our pan. There you go. Look at that. This is going to be a beautiful base to put our pineapple on. So here I have my rings of pineapple. I'm using tinned pineapple. You can use fresh if you want. Now I have taken away the juice, but we reserved it for later on. So don't throw away the juice that comes in the tin. You want to keep that. So just carefully place in your slices of pineapple. Make sure that they're well drained. Lovely. So our next ingredient is the iconic maraschino cherries. Now you have to have these on a pineapple upside down cake. So remove the stems and just pop one in the middle of each ring of pineapple. You can leave these out, but they do make it look really pretty and just remind you of like a classic pineapple upside down cake. Okay, we're going to set this over to the sides. We'll come back to that in a minute. And now we're going to mix together our dry ingredients. So into a small bowl, we'll add in your flour, your baking powder and your salt and just give that a little mix together. You know, I always like to mix my dry separately just so that the salt, the baking powder, baking soda, whatever it is, gets mixed up really well before adding it into your wet. So now in a nice big bowl, we're going to cream together our room temperature butter and our sugars, some white sugar and some brown sugar. Now you can do this next step by hand. I'm going to use my electric hand mixer, but if you do it by hand, you're just going to really need to give it some welly. Now what we're going to do is just cream up these ingredients really well together. This is why you need room temperature butter. It has to be soft, so it'll whip. This will take around two to three minutes on high speed. So technically I have made pineapple upside down cake for you guys before because it's one of the recipes in my book. It's the Stafford's upside down cake. And that's the kind of cake that we grew up with. This one is a little bit different. It's got more caramel, like you know, it has pineapple juice in it. If this is kind of next level pineapple cake. Okay, lovely. Now into this, add in an egg, cream that in, and then add in your next egg. And then in you go. Once your eggs are mixed in, we're going to take our dry ingredients. And we're going to just mix those in like so. And then you can see that kind of coming together to this. I'm going to add in my little bit of milk. And here is our secret ingredient is the pineapple juice that we reserved from the tin. You want to keep half a cup of that pineapple juice. And we add that back into the cake batter to give you like that extra oomph of pineapple. Okay, last but not least, a little splash of almond extract. Now, a very good tip here is don't do what I just did and pour it in, measure it in your spoon and then add it in because otherwise you can end up with too much. This is smelling very almondy right now. So there you go. There's our batter. It looks lovely. It's nice and light and fluffy. Oh, tastes amazing. I can taste the pineapple juice and I can definitely taste the almond extract. So bring back in your tin that we prepared earlier. Here's one that I prepared earlier. And then just pour your batter over your pineapple. Make sure you cover up those little pieces of cherries peeking out. And then that's it. Now into the oven. Bake your pineapple upside down cake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit or 180 degrees Celsius for roughly around 35 to 45 minutes or so. It doesn't take long before you're going to be enjoying it. This looks gorgeous. It smells so pineappley. So here's what I'm going to do. You want to turn it out pretty soon after it comes out of the oven so it doesn't stick to the bottom of your pan while it's still warm. This is the moment of truth. Oh, gorgeous. Look at how gorgeous and golden brown that is. It's still piping hot from the oven. The pineapple has kind of crystallized a little bit. It's almost kind of like translucent, has a lovely caramel baked in all around us. This is absolutely gorgeous. And look at that. When I push the cake, it's really soft and it's soaked in that yummy caramel. While it's still warm, fresh from the oven, I am going to cut into us. Look at that. See how soft that cake is. And you see that layer of brown like the caramel baked down in there. It's absolutely gorgeous. This is my favorite part of the job. The tasting. You see right away that transports me back to when we were young. And we would make this at home. It tastes even better than I remember it tasting. It's soft, it's sweet, super pineappley. And the almond extract in there makes it really more rich. And now I have a new recipe to share with my family and George for us to enjoy in the future. Ask and you shall receive I finally made pineapple upside down cake. I really hope you enjoy it. Follow me on social media for lots more summer recipes just like this one.