Truthfully, I wanted to make this as cupcakes, when I started out. But the prospect of trimming down all those pineapple rings to make them fit made me a little crazy, so I just made a full cake.
Turns out, this is a remarkably simple cake. I went with a shortcut method, but if you’re willing to you could easily make it totally from scratch.
I read a bunch of recipes, and they were all pretty similar, so I bought the base ingredients and just ‘winged it’ from there.
Pineapple Upside Down Cake
(Me)
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 can pineapple slices in juice (not syrup), drained; juice reserved
6-10 maraschino cherries, drained
1 box yellow cake mix (or pineapple cake mix, or your own homemade yellow cake)
*eggs, liquid, and oil as specified by your cake mix directions
Directions
– Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
– In a 12” cast iron skillet (or two 9’ cake pans, or a 9×13 rectangular pan, or really anything…if it isn’t cast iron just make sure you grease/flour it), melt the butter over low heat
– Add the brown sugar, sprinkling it evenly over the bottom of the skillet and remove from heat
– Arrange pineapple slices on the bottom of the skillet; place cherries inside the pineapple slices and around them
– Prepare the cake mix according to the package directions, replacing any way it calls for with the leftover pineapple juice (don’t worry if you don’t have enough; just top off with water)
– Pour the cake mix over the pineapple slices, and place the whole skillet in the oven
– Bake for 1 hour (may take a little longer, just check on it) or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean
– Let rest in the skillet to cool for half an hour, then gently flip the skillet and your cake onto a serving platter
