Pineapple Upside Down Cake - *Home Entry*

Yeah, so…I had all these big plans to go to the Duck-A-Thon in Huntington Beach but neither Kevin or myself was feeling active enough to get out of our pajamas on Sunday, so I’m afraid you are left with a home entry. And it’s going to be a short entry at that as it was so damn easy. I will make it up to next week as Bethhead is coming to town and we have a lot of things planned.

SO YES! Pineapple Upside-down Cake! As you have probably noticed, there are a lot of normal everyday things that I have never tried. Pineapple upside-down cake is definitely on that list. I often wonder why over the course of my 32 years that I never happened to run across these everyday things. Have most of you tasted a pineapple upside-down cake, or a soufflé for that matter? Growing up, my family certainly was into trying new recipes. Ask my sister about hamburger pie. Go on, I dare you. Maybe it was the fact that pineapple upside-down cake and soufflé in their minds was so ordinary that doing odd recipes was exciting. They never took into account that odd recipes are now what I consider normal. Did anyone else grow up with cheesecake cupcakes or salisbury bougniogn (that’s so French I’m not even going to apologize for misspelling it)?

Don’t ask me how I decided on pineapple upside-down cake. I think it might have to do with the fact that pineapple upside-down cake is fun to say, like spatula and platypus are. Maybe it’s because it’s a really pretty looking cake. I don’t know about the reason but I do know that I’m going to make it again. It’s really good, especially if you aren’t usually that into sweets. Like Kevin. I’m going to side step for a quick second to tell you about an ongoing repeated conversation Kevin and I have. If I bring up donuts, either in the fact that I’m in the mood for one or that they were brought into work that day, Kevin will always always say, “I don’t like donuts.” And I will always always respond, “You don’t like donuts or you don’t like EATING donuts?” (-in reference to ones waist line) Kevin will usually shut up for a couple seconds, get a bit annoyed, and repeat that he doesn’t like donuts. But I can testify in front of a high court that I have seen him eating a donut on more than one occasion without a gun pointed to his head.

SO YES! Onto the cake!

I got this recipe from AllRecipes.com. Most of the recipes for pineapple upside-down cake involved using a skillet. Because I’m lazy modern in my cooking style, I decided that not only would I forego the skillet, I was also going to use a cake mix instead of hauling out the cake flour and such.

Just to show you how easy this was, I’m going to write out the recipe.

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Make sure all live animals are out of the oven at this time.
   
2. Butter both cake pans and put a ¼ cup of brown sugar sprinkled over each one. Try not to sing Echo and the Bunnymen’s ‘Lips like Sugar’ when this is done or else you’ll have it in your head all night.





3. Add pineapple slices and cherries to one pan, and crushed pineapple to the other. Oh! And save the juice from the pineapple can. I guess I should have mentioned that sooner before you drained the juice down the sink, huh?
   
   
   
   
4. Make the cake mix as directed on the box. Substitute some of the water with the pineapple juice. Marvel at the Spanish directions on the other side and convince yourself that you could totally read it. Then look at the other side and realize one of the only words you got right was huevos.
   
5. Pour batter evenly into each pan. It’s ok if some of the batter makes it to your mouth.
   
   
   
   
6. Bake for 40-50 minutes, or until a toothpick (non-used preferably) comes out clean.
   
   
   
   
7. Cool for 20 minutes (the cake, not you).
   
8. Dump out cake…nicely…on top of each other so that the pineapple is looking up.
   
   
   
9. Eat. Yum.