Dreaming of Warmer Weather: A Pineapple Upside Down Cake!

Today was my day off so it was a baking day!!!!!

Its 16 degrees here in NYC today. Soooo cold! I love cold weather but it's even too cold for me at this point.  I guess it was the cold weather that had me craving something tropical. Like pineapples!!! I also wanted to do something from a vintage recipe. Luckily I found this cute blog, A Cake Bakes in Brooklyn. Susan writes a food blog based on recipes from 1919 all the way to the mid 50s. I was excited to find this blog because baking is one of my stress relievers. And if I can use vintage recipes, it's even better!!

I used A Cake Bakes in Brooklyn's recipe for Pineapple Upside Down cake. The  recipe is supposed to be c. 1950.

I won't give the full recipe. The link above takes you directly to it. The recipes on the site are mostly from recipe cards or old pieces of paper that people had used to jot them down on. After I read through the recipe a couple of times I found it to be pretty straight forward. The only tricky part was the eggs. The eggs must be separated and you have to beat the whites into a meringue then beat the yolks separately. So you have to use two different bowls and beaters.  If you don't bake much that can be a bit tedious. Other than that it was pretty quick and easy.

I also had to use a frying pan instead of the skillet it called for. We have a cast iron skillet but it would have been way to big. I would have had a pancake instead!

Susan from the blog decided against using the maraschino cherries because of all the additives. I went ahead and used them because it gives the cake the retro- tiki look I was going for. I figure that since I try to cook and bake organic most of the time that using the cherries this once won't kill us. I also had to use canned pineapple because I don't think it's quite pineapple season yet!

And here is the finished product fresh out of the oven. I let the cake cool for 10 minutes then inverted it on a plate. It slid right out! Perfection. It smells divine!

And it's quite tasty. A little on the sweet side but I'm a sweets addict so that's fine with me. The cake part takes like a classic sponge cake. I think this comes from beating the egg whites. I make a Yule Log every year for Christmas and the recipe follows similar instructions.

The topping is buttery and caramelized and yummy! This recipe is worth a try if you like pineapples and cake.

Go on over to Susan's blog and check out her other yummy, vintage treats!

Now to find a Tiki party to take my cake to!