Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Looking for an easy n’ quick cake? Upside down cakes are as old as skillets over fire yet no one can get enough of them, especially with a bit of pineapple!

Life is such a fragile state. A passing moment sailing through the universe on the waves of forces and lights. Comparing life as we know it to the age of all the matter around us, is as mind-blowing as trying to figure out how cakes take up their shape in the oven.

While the former needs the power of tens, the latter only the power of our hands and a bit of warmth. Since Prometheus did the heavy lifting of stealing the fire, we don’t have to rely on the mercy of the gods to provide us with the heat that needs to bake cakes.

We can make cake on our own, given that the gods provide us with the good weather for a plentiful harvest and strength to process it.

Unfortunately, it seems that lately somebody has been messing with the climate, so getting a nice harvest year after year seems to be in an ever-growing doubt. Not like life was easier before.

A couple of years ago people didn’t even have ovens to bake their cakes. What they did was, to use what they had to make some deliciousness, even on the go. This is how upside-down cakes were born.

Some seasonal fruit was laid on the bottom of a skillet then the batter was poured in, and after a couple of slow minutes at the fireside, a cake was ready to be enjoyed. That time the cakes weren’t called upside down cakes but skillet cakes or rather spider cakes.

As with many things in the kitchen real spiders has as much to do with spider cakes as eggs with egg rolls, not much. Back in the days when open fires were primary choice to prepare meals skillets with legs, were used to achieve flavorful results for dinner. People commonly referred to these blackened legged beasts as spiders, hence came the name of the cake that was made in them, spider cake.

The wisdom of cooks is overshadowed only by their laziness. Probably this is how we came back to the upside-down cakes when everybody got their oven and were able to bake proper cakes at will.

As cakes require finesse and care, upside down cake has none of it but still provides the same pleasures and satisfaction that a proper cake does. By placing fruit at the bottom of a baking tray we take care of the decoration of the cake at the same time, too.

Sure enough, we can fiddle with the fruits and organize them with painstaking details, but that won’t earn us more respect or bring down Michelin stars. Especially, if we don’t use pineapple but try to go back to the cake’s roots and experiment with seasonal fruits.

Unfortunately, not many fruits look as untouched by the heat as pineapple does when tossing them into the scorching oven for half an hour. Most of them will turn out to be a soggy half fruit half jam mess, dripping down on the side of our freshly flipped cake.

So, if we decide to make upside down cake for any other occasion than gobbling it up in the shadows of our living room in front of our favorite series, choose pineapple for the sake of our friendship and reputation.

Ingredients

10 slice Pineapple (cleaned, sliced)
6 Eggs (separated)
3 tablespoon Honey or sweetener of choice
1 cup / 120g Flour
1 teaspoon Baking powder (follow instruction on packaging)
1 teaspoon Vanilla extract

Kitchen utensils

Ø9¾ / Ø24cm Baking tray

How to make Pineapple upside-down cake

Prepare cake tin with parchment paper. Put pineapple slices at the bottom of the cake tin.
Separate eggs and put egg whites in a mixing bowl. Keep yolks for later.
Measure flour and mix it with the baking powder in a different bowl.
Beat egg whites with electric mixer until hard peaks form.
Add egg yolks to it one by one and the vanilla extract whilst beating the egg whites.
Mix in the flour too.
Pour batter in the cake tin on top of the pineapple slices.
Put it in the 350°F / 180°C preheated oven for 45-50 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.
Flip it on a cooling rack to cool down completely before slicing it up.

Enjoy!

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