I made that!

A confession: I’m not into tropical fruits. Well, bananas excluded. All others I feel pretty lukewarm about. And pineapples? Yuck. Not a pineapple fan. But then something happened. My friend Josh made this cake for me at my goodbye San Francisco party. It was pure heaven. And now I’m hooked on pineapple upside down cake.

It was my first time even purchasing a pineapple. And photographing it? How do you photograph something so odd looking? I settled on an outside shot, because it just looked weird in my kitchen.

So anyways, the cake.

I started by making a salty, sweet, dark butterscotch sauce. Once ready, I poured the sauce into a 10″ cake pan.

And then I begin the task of dissecting this alien fruit.

And then I got a little obsessive about making perfect little rings out of pineapple, using cookie cutters. I nestled my slices in the butterscotch sauce.

Then I made the most fabulous almondy cake batter.

And spread it all over the pineapples.

I baked the cake until it was all browned and happy looking. It cooled for a bit and then I flipped it out onto a plate. And it looked just like this:

And I loved it. I love pineapple cake. Maybe I even love pineapples.

UPSIDE_DOWN PINEAPPLE CAKE RECIPE:

Butterscotch Sauce:

2 oz butter

1 cup brown sugar, packed

¾ cup heavy cream

1 TBSP vanilla extract

1 tsp salt

– Melt butter in saucepan.

– Add brown sugar, moisten.

– Cook on medium heat 3-5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

– Whisk in cream, vanilla and salt.

– Cook on medium high heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Cake:

1 cup + 6 TBSP all-purpose flour

1/2 cup cake flour

6 TBSP (2 oz) ground almonds

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups of sugar

9 oz unsalted butter, room temperature

4 large eggs

1 vanilla bean

3/4 cup sour cream

– Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

– Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean and rub the seeds into the sugar to break up clumps.

– Whisk the flours, almonds, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl.

– Cream butter on medium speed for 1 minute. Slowly stream in sugar while continuing to beat. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.

– Add dry ingredients alternately with sour cream, beginning and ending with the dries.

– Pour cake batter over butterscotch and pineapple in pan.

– Bake cake until tester inserted into the center comes out clean, about 1 hour. Cool cake in pan on a rack for 10 minutes. Turn cake out onto a platter. Serve warm or at room temperature.