Pineapple Upside Down Cake

Posted by Lori:

Last week I needed to make a cake auction for a fund raiser at school and decided to make a Pineapple Upside Down Cake.  I couldn't find a recipe that didn't use a cast iron skillet, which I don't have.  After emailing mom and she sent me this Betty Crocker recipe.  It was for a 9-inch square pan, but I made it in a 9-inch round instead.  I actually ended up doing two of them for the auction and then halved the recipe and made a smaller one for my husband.  Pineapple Upside Down Cake was actually his groom's cake for our wedding and it's still one of his favorite cakes. 

PINEAPPLE UPSIDE DOWN CAKE

¼ cup butter or margarine
2/3 cup packed brown sugar

Sliced pineapple in juice, drained (from a 14 ounce can - use 7 slices for a round pan and 9 for a square)
7 or 9 maraschino cherries without stems, optional
1-1/3 cups all purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup shortening
1-1/2 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
¾ cup milk
1 egg

Heat oven to 350.

In a 9-inch round or square pan, melt butter in oven.

Sprinkle brown sugar evenly over melted butter.

Arrange pineapple slices over brown sugar.

Place cherry in center of each pineapple slice, if using the cherries.

In medium bowl, beat the remaining ingredients with electric mixer on low speed 30 seconds. Beat on high speed 3 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally.

Pour batter over the pineapple and cherries.

Bake 50 to 55 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Immediately place heatproof serving plate upside down over pan. Turn plate and pan over. Leave the pan over the cake a few minutes so brown sugar mixture can drizzle over the cake---remove pan. Store the cake loosely covered.

A funny part of this story is that the cakes never made it to the fundraising auction.  I had asked my husband to take another dish down to the gym for a basketball game hospitality room and "thought" I told him to take the cakes then, too.  It was hours later, at the end of the final game that evening that I noticed the Pineapple Upside Down cakes I had made weren't at the auction table.  I asked the coach and she hadn't seen them.  When I got home, there they were - sitting on the counter top!  On the plus side, we had dessert for several days :).