I am currently facilitating a baking group at my local mental health clubhouse, which is part of my volunteer requirements for the peer support training program I'm in. Once a week, we bake something simple that can be accomplished in 2 hours, and recently I was asked if I could use up a pineapple that the clubhouse had on had that had gone overripe. It was a pretty pathetic looking specimen, but once I cut into I thought it would be OK for a pineapple upside down cake. I sliced up the pineapple and went ahead with the project.
It turned out superbly! The recipe for the cake is Betty Crackpot's Dinette Cake, and you can find that recipe
here. For the upside down part of the cake, i.e. the bottom, mix together 1/4 cup melted butter and 1/2 cup of packed brown sugar. Spread evenly over the bottom of the cake pan. Arrange pineapple slices on top, make the cake batter, then spread it evenly over the pineapple. I know this is supposed to have maraschino cherries in it, but honestly, it didn't need them (and they're not in my budget). Here is the cake!
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Pineapple Upside Down Cake
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Also, very recently, I went over to some friends' place and divested them of all their rhubarb. Two of these friends had never had rhubarb before, and one didn't like it, so the rhubarb plant was basically going to waste. After the success of my pineapple upside down cake, I decided to make a rhubarb version. And this is it:
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| Rhubarb Upside Down Cake |
Same deal with the bottom, except rhubarb needs a bit of help. I used about a cup and a half of finely chopped rhubarb, and combined it with about 1/4 cup of sugar, and some cinnamon & ground ginger.
This was TO.DIE.FOR. In fact, it's one of the best things I think I've ever baked!
I loved it! And I ate 3/4 of it in four days, I'm slightly sheepish to admit. I gave the other quarter to a friend.
I have in the freezer a bag of wild blackberries. I think I'll make a blackberry upside down cake next!
