Kricket Cakes

I was feeling like making a retro dish and when I came across this recipe, it hit the spot- for some reason, pineapple upsidedown cake seems like a thing of the past, like mincemeat pie or little smoky casserole. Many people seem to have an adverse reaction to the mention of pineapple upsidedown cake, as they would to the other two dishes I mentioned above. I think that may be because it was often made with questionable ingredients- e.g. a can of mushy fruit cocktail pineapple and cherries. I fancied mine up a bit by using fresh pineapple and omitting those maraschino cherries altogether (I really think they should only be used for the occasional shirley temple or traditional ice cream sundae).

The cake didn’t have the look I was going for (it is really hard to cut pineapple in rings) and the cherries, while gross, would have added a bit of color to the bland looking cake. However, it tasted quite delicious, confirming that using the fresh pineapple was indeed a good idea. I served it up with vanilla ice cream (John mentioned coconut ice cream would be good too) because everything is better with ice cream.

This recipe serves 6-8 people and is based on a recipe by Alton Brown in ”I’m Just Here for More Food.”

For the Cake:

• 1 medium pineapple
• 1 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 1 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3 eggs
• 5 tablespoons milk
• 1 cup sugar

To Make the Cake:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Remove the skin from the pineapple and chop into 1 inch pieces, set aside.
3. Melt the butter in a cast iron skillet over medium heat.
4. Add the dark brown sugar and stir until it dissolves.
5. Remove from the heat and cover the bottom of the pan with the pineapple, set aside.
6. In a large bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together, set aside.
7. In a small bowl whisk the eggs, milk and sugar together.
8. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until just mixed.
9. Pour the batter over the pineapple in the pan and even out with a spatula.
10. Bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
11. Remove the skillet from the oven and allow it to cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes.
12. After 10 minutes, place a plate on top of the skillet and then turn upsidedown to invert the cake onto the plate.
13. Allow the cake to cool completely.

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This entry was posted on Monday, June 15th, 2009 at 10:55 pm and is filed under Cakes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.