Upside Down Pineapple Cake 1

I hate making caramel. I remembered, during my teens, I tried making crème caramel, and oh, how bitter was the caramel.

This time, I did it with 3 attempts. And I’d say, I’m not all that satisfied with it.

I used demerara sugar, that has larger granules than regular sugar.

1st attempt: Didn’t grind the sugar, therefore it took a long time for the sugar to melt. And when it finally did, the caramel was burnt. I didn’t realize that until I filled my baking pans with it, and tasted it later. Urgh!!! Bitter!!! I waited for the caramel to harden, that didn’t take long. Cracked it and discarded them.

2nd attempt: Grind the sugar. But I cooked the caramel slightly too long and it burnt. The first 2 pans didn’t taste burnt, but as the caramel remained in the pan(on top of stove, heat off) as I filled the others, it burnt. I threw away all the caramel again.

3rd attempt: I really tried to be careful. And I removed it away from the stove when the sugar has melted and there’s a little bit of visible liquid butter. I continued to stir until the butter is no longer visible. The first 6 pans were ok, last 2 were a bit burnt. Well… Caramel never likes me.

I baked this in eight 3inch pans.

Recipe adapted from David Lebovitz

8 slices of canned pineapple

4 glace cherries, halved

35gm butter

100gm brown sugar

115gm butter

150gm sugar
2 eggs

125ml milk

1 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp vanilla extract

200gm cake flour sifted with 1/2 tsp sodium bicarbonate

1. Melt butter over low heat and put in brown sugar and cook on medium heat until sugar is dissolved and mixture is bubbly.

2. Pour into pans and spread it around. Lay one slice of pineapple into each pan and put a halved cherry into the core area of the pineapple.

3. Put cream of tartar into milk and stir. (You can skip this step if u substitute both ingredients with just plain yogurt)

4. Preheat oven at 160/180C.

5. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Put in eggs, one by one, beating well after each addition. Mix in vanilla extract.

6. Mix in flour in 2 batches, alternating with milk mixture. Mix until flour is moistened. Do not overmix.

7. Divide batter equally into prepared pans.

8. Bake for 30-35mins.

9. Invert onto plate immediately upon removal from oven, if not the caramel will hardened and stick to the pan when left to cool down, even for 5 minutes.

I will do this again. The cake was really good. Soft and fluffy. The next time will be with fresh pineapple, canned ones do not have much fragrance. And I will not cook the caramel again. I need to find a alternate way to brown the caramel...